God Doesn't Waste a Scar

Great to be with you, church, this morning.

My name's Russ.

If I hadn't had a chance to meet you, um I'm one of the pastors here at the Grove.

And I want to say a big welcome to all of you that are here this morning.

And uh maybe if it's your first or second time, or maybe it's your first time in a while, I want to say um a special welcome to all of you that are here.

Hopefully you were greeted warmly when you came in.

Um, but you know, let's let's as we dive into scripture, my prayer is that you'll have an encounter with Jesus this morning.

Um, as we wrap up this series, um uh scars, um, you know, earlier this year uh I I sat at a closing table.

Uh my mom died in May of 25, and um we did all the things that you do.

You clean out a house and and get it ready to sell, and and so um I sat I sat at the closing table table at my mom's at the at the for the sale of my mom's house, and um, and it and it hit me while I was at that table that I shouldn't have been there by myself.

It should have been it should have been me and my brother Eddie and my brother Butch.

And and and I was overwhelmed with this rush of emotion.

Um my brother Eddie died in 1992 uh tragically of a of a massive asthma attack.

Um my brother Butch has been stricken with Alzheimer's, um probably the godliest uh man that I've I've known in my life.

Uh a man of integrity that loved Jesus, that loved his family well, that invested in in no telling how many people in his whole life, and and and literally he and my sister-in-law, I believe, have have had huge impact in our community here.

Um they founded the CLC and and uh helped found the Crisis Pregnancy Center.

I mean it all these things, this rush of emotion, and the reality hit me that I was sitting alone and and it it hurt.

It hurt.

And some of you know that, you know what I'm talking about, whether it's it's a diagnosis or whether it's going through a difficult um ending of a relationship or feeling betrayed, whatever it is, I I found myself dealing, I found myself dealing with anger and grief.

And I would like to tell you that's all done with, but but it's still sometimes a struggle and just the pain that comes to me, and it hit me and it hurt me.

This is not the way it's supposed to be.

It's just not the way it's supposed to be.

And so so where do you go with what you're going through?

Where do you go with what you're going through?

Because everybody's carrying something today: a grief, a diagnosis, a secret sin, a quiet uh joy that no one knows about.

James says there's one address, and we're gonna be in the book of James and also in Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

I know those are two strange uh passages that don't maybe don't seem to go together, but I hope they will by the end of this morning.

So if you want to look up James chapter 5 and to be ready for that, James says there's one address for all of these things.

James 5 · chapter mention

There's an address for it, there's something we do with it.

And see, we're living in this age of the rise of AI, artificial intelligence, and and today in our culture, you can go and develop a relationship with a chat box, chatbot, chat box, whatever, chatbot.

I mean I I don't know much, I know about half what I'm talking about here, okay?

So bear with me.

So but you can confess, you can go to a chatbot and confess.

You can go with with a mental health crisis and put in something.

Millions now type their deepest secrets into a machine that will never gossip, never judge, and never remember them personally.

It's confession without community, it's honesty without a human face, and James offers us something that an algorithm never can.

A righteous person who prays for you and will love you next Sunday, and the next Sunday, and hopefully the days between the Sundays.

A person, an actual being.

See, we've all experienced the effects of this broken world, and that's what this series is really about is that we we suffer pain and we have hurt and we have wounds, and the question is whether it is whether or not we will sit in it alone or bring it before the Lord and accept the challenge that James gives us and bring it to the community of Jesus.

And that's what we've been talking about throughout this series, scars over the past few weeks.

We've named the scars that we carry, the wounds that other people have caused, the wounds that come through, the brokenness of life, and um, and even some of the wounds connected to our own choices.

We've talked about what forgiveness looks like when somebody has hurt us.

And through it all, we've been reminded that following Jesus doesn't mean we somehow make it through life without getting wounded.

Every one of us has scars.

For some, it's been it's a betrayal of someone you trusted.

For some, it was a marriage that ended.

For some, it's a lost, it's a person that you loved that has gone on into eternity and you you never imagined life without them.

Maybe it was a diagnosis, a disappointment, a season of waiting or something that happened years ago that still affects you today.

And and and and sometimes there are uninvited reminders.

A date on the calendar, a phone call, an offhand comment, a place, a song.

I find myself driving through certain areas of the community where I would always call my mom.

And so when I still drive through those areas, I want to pick up my phone and call and just check on her.

And so either you've been through something that's been painful, or for certain at some time, and I hate to give you this news, you will experience something that brings great pain and hurt and the emotions that come with it, the anger and the despair and all the other emotions.

And so here's a question: how do we process that through our relationship with Jesus?

And how does this impact our reading of Scripture?

How does this affect our understanding of the character and the attributes of God?

If God is good, some people ask, why does he allow this?

And our secular culture prizes self-sufficiency above every, almost above every other virtue.

The remaining myth of the modern West is the autonomous individual who needs no one, the entrepreneur who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, the therapized self who's done all the work alone, the strong person who never shows weakness.

And into this culture, James drops a bombshell.

And the bombshell is this confess your sins.

No surprise.

But he says, confess your sins to one another.

Confess your sins to one another.

Nothing could be more counter-cultural.

In reality, we live in a world full of hurt and hate and dependency upon unhealthy substances.

We need each other.

We need community that only the body of Christ can provide.

He says to access this level of community by what?

By what?

How do we access this level of community?

We confess my sins.

We confess our sins out loud to someone else.

And listen, most of us are sitting here, and I know what you're thinking.

I'm not telling anybody.

And it may be hard, but it's God's way.

See, God is good.

His plans are accomplished often through our painful experiences and even in our suffering and our own sinful decisions.

What does God do with the wound after the wound?

What does God do with the wound after the wound?

If you're still in the waiting, you're still carrying the pain.

You still don't understand maybe why God allowed it.

That's why I love what Chuck Swindahl says.

He said, God's will is always best seen as we look in the rearview mirror.

It's always seen looking back clearly.

You certainly can't see how he could ever use it.

So here's the question I want us to wrestle with today.

Because it's hard for us to see it when we're in the middle of it, but God is working in ways that we don't understand.

His purposes are bigger than what we can see in the moment.

Go to Isaiah 55, and it'll bring that to life.

So what if the thing that wounded you doesn't have to be wasted?

Listen, let me let me ask that again.

What if the thing that wounded you the deepest, the thing that's hurt you the most, what if the thing that you're still carrying, what if it has purpose beyond yourself?

What if it doesn't have to be wasted?

And here's the big idea for this morning.

If you don't get anything else, this is it.

Right here, right here.

God's promises, God promises to use our present pain for eternal good.

God promises to use our present pain for eternal good.

And my prayer this morning is that God would work in our whole and our hearts, and that the Holy Spirit will set us free from whatever it is that would hold us back from experiencing the community that God talks about in this passage, that what I believe God points to throughout all of Scripture.

And so there's four action responses to this big idea.

Four action responses.

If you're a note taker, you can write these down or you can go to our app and follow along with there.

I believe those notes are in there.

But here's the first action step.

Name it to change it.

Name it to change it.

Now, now some of you thought I was gonna say name it and claim it.

No, we're not that type of church, right?

We don't preach the prosperity gospel.

Name it and claim it.

No, it's name it to change it.

What it means is identify it.

You call it out.

You know what that is?

Let me tell you, you know the word for that.

Confession.

Confession.

This is my issue.

This is my pain.

This is my wound.

This is my habitual sin.

This is my secret.

This is it.

I need to name it to change it.

I've got to bring it out of the dark and bring it into the light.

And God promises to work when we do that.

Look at James 5.16.

He says, therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

You want healing?

You want to experience God's work of healing?

God's work of redemption in your life.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be, say it with me.

And it says the prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

See, James is a letter that's that's drenched in the wisdom tradition of Israel, like the Proverbs or the book of Job.

And so James is a New Testament version of that type of genre, that type of writing.

And so James wrote this letter to a group of believers who've been scattered.

They've been living under pressure and persecution.

And his words are deeply practical because he wants them to understand what genuine faith looks like when life gets hard.

So one of the most quoted verses out of James is that faith without works is dead.

Faith without works is dead.

So James is saying, listen, let's put feet to our faith.

Let's put feet to our faith.

And so throughout the letter, James draws from the wisdom tradition of Israel and the teachings of Jesus.

He talks about the trials and temptations and our words and conflict and patience and prayer.

And then he closes the letter.

He turns to the places where people are suffering and needing healing.

And here's what he says.

I mean, he gives a sequence that's plain to understand.

It's clear.

Confession comes before healing.

We cannot rush toward a hopeful ending without bringing the real wound into the light.

And my prayer would be that we would, we would, the Holy Spirit and the power, the resurrection power of Jesus would break us free from whatever it is, whether it's embarrassment, self-preservation, whatever it is that would want us to keep things hidden in the dark.

Some of us carry pain caused by other person's sins.

Some of us carry pain that we help create through our own words and choices and silence and resentment or retaliation.

Confession is not self-condemnation, it is truthful surrender.

Can I say that again?

Confession is not self-condemnation, it is truthful surrender.

It says this here's what here's what James says in talking about confession.

It says, this is what happened.

This is where I was wounded.

This is where I wounded other people.

Lord, please have mercy.

He says, confess your sins to one another.

Pray for one another that you may be healed.

And there should not be any shame attached to asking for that kind of help.

Right?

I mean, I encourage people to go to see a counselor and to go talk to someone if they need that type of level of help.

So going to a counselor is not a failure of faith, it's a strength.

We all need other people.

And sometimes one of the wisest things you can do is sit down with someone who's trained to help you understand what you're carrying and begin working through it in a healthy way.

As a matter of fact, if you use the tap tag on the back of your chair, on the back of the chair, it'll direct you to a form that you can fill out that allows our team to offer you direction and help and where you can go to talk to somebody if you would like to.

Listen, healing does not begin by minimizing pain or pretending responsibility does not matter.

Healing begins where honesty replaces hiding.

Notice how James structures this closing section around three life conditions and a common answer.

Here's what he says.

Suffering, question mark, pray.

Cheerful, sing praises.

That's what we do, right?

We sing because we've been redeemed, we've been saved, we we have been restored and reconciled, our Holy Father.

So we've got something to celebrate.

He says, hey, uh, celebrate.

He said, sick, call the elders.

Ask them to pray over you.

The genius of this passage is whatever your circumstance, the answer runs vertically toward God.

I mean, this passage in James, it's really, I mean, if you just read it over and over for several times, you would notice that word pray.

Pray, pray.

There's a theme in this passage.

And when you see repetition in Scripture, God is trying to say something through that repetition.

Before we ask, what can God do with this?

We must first ask, what is this?

What must I name?

Or grieve, confess, what must I release?

Name it to change it.

Then what do we do?

We go vertical, but we do so in community with our brothers and sisters.

Here's the second action step.

It is to bring it into the presence of God for healing.

Bring it into the presence of God for healing.

Let me go back to James 13 through 15.

He says, Is anyone among you suffering?

He should pray.

If anyone is cheerful, he should sing praises.

If anyone among you sick, he should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Anointing him or her in the name of the Lord.

The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up if he has committed sins.

He will be forgiven.

That word, suffering, in the Greek, it carries the same, it carries this sense of enduring hardship or enduring affliction, any hurt, any pain.

It might be physical, it might be emotional, it might be mental, but it means enduring hardship or affliction.

And James addresses every condition of the soul: suffering, joy, sickness, weakness, sin.

And see, the church is meant to be the community where people do not suffer alone.

But it seems that we come in and we sing a few songs and we say a prayer, but we just walk out as if nothing has happened.

And from my perspective as a pastor, which means I know way more than I really want to know about things, I'm like, why do people not come and ask for prayer?

What is it?

Is it self-preservation?

Is it shame?

Whatever it is, what is it?

Charles Spurgeon said this.

He says, James does not say, if anyone among you, is anyone among you eloquent?

Let him pray.

He does not say, is anyone learned, gifted, polished?

No.

He says, is anyone suffering?

And the passport to the throne of grace is not talent, but need.

And who among us lacks need?

So we pray when you suffer.

You invite trusted believers into the places that you've kept private.

You receive prayer not as a performance of strength, but as an act of dependence.

Healing may be immediate, gradual, emotional, relational, physical, all of these over time.

God is not absent in the process.

Spurgeon again says this.

He says, suffering, my friends, is God's dark servant and sent to drive us to the mercy seat.

Do not waste your sorrows.

Let every ache become an altar.

I love that.

He says God's dark servant suffering.

Is set to drive us to the mercy seat, to the place of God's presence, the place of God's presence.

That we encounter God Himself in prayer.

And this matters.

This matters enormously.

When the church prays over the sick, it's not just performing a private religious errand.

It's enacting a kingdom sign.

It's a foretaste of the day when creation itself will be healed, when God will raise up not just the sick, but the dead in the resurrection.

That verb in this passage where it says raise up is the very same word that is used of Jesus when he was bodily resurrected.

Alright, I got me in over here.

I'm going to come over here and say thank you for participating.

This group over here.

Can I say it again?

The same word raised up that James is saying here is the same word to use to describe Jesus when he is bodily resurrected and he walks out of the tomb free, showing that he has power over sin and death in the grave.

All right.

They're way ahead of you now.

And so it's the foretaste of that day when creation itself will be healed, when God will raise up not just the sick, but those in the resurrection.

Every healing, listen, listen.

Every healing is a signpost pointing toward Easter's ultimate reversal of decay and death.

And see, the believing community meets every condition of life by what?

By honestly to God, bringing it honestly to God together in prayer.

And James says, if is anyone among you suffering, he should pray.

Is anyone sick?

Call for the elders.

In other words, don't let disappointment teach you or keep you from asking of God.

Matthew 7.

I'm not going to turn to the passage and it's not on the screen, but he uses three words.

Ask, seek, and knock.

Ask, seek, and knock.

We're to come to God openly in prayer.

And healing is not pretending the wound never existed, it is discovering that the wound is no longer the final authority over your life.

God is not, oh, they're coming back.

God doesn't promise that life will be without scars.

He doesn't say all things are always good.

Some things are evil.

Some things are just unjust.

Some things are not right.

Some things should never have happened.

But under the sovereign hand of a good God, even the things that are not good are not beyond his redemptive purposes.

I think of Paul when he writes in Romans, he says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who what?

Next action step is this surrender, surrender it to God's sovereign plan.

Surrender it to God's sovereign plan.

And this is where we come back to Genesis chapter 50.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

And it's the story of Joseph.

Man, it is a long story.

And I just got a few verses to read here.

But but before I read these verses, just give you a little glimpse.

Joseph, um, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers.

And he is taken to Egypt and sold as a slave.

His brothers didn't like him.

And sometimes we we kind of pretend that Joseph is completely innocent in this story, but Joseph has a little bit of a pride issue.

I mean, he he has this special clothing that his dad gave him.

You know, he's the youngest, he's the favorite.

I'm the youngest, I was the favorite.

And nobody is around to argue that now.

And so he's sold into slavery.

While he's in slavery, through the work, I believe, of God through him, he rises to a place of authority.

Where not only does he have great influence in the land of Egypt, he ends up during a great famine having global influence and saving many lives.

Here's what Joseph, here's what a few verses that we'll read.

Genesis 50, verse 15.

Genesis 50:15

It says, When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, by the way, uh, Joseph provides an opportunity for his brothers to come back.

They don't know who he is, they don't recognize him, but Joseph recognizes them.

And and and you can you can see the turmoil that he's dealing with and the pain that he's dealing with.

It's in the text.

And when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said to one another, If Joseph is holding a grudge against us, he will certainly repay us for all the suffering we caused him.

So they sent this message to Joseph.

Before he died, your father gave us a command.

Say this to Joseph, please forgive your brothers' transgression and their sin, the suffering they caused you.

Therefore, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.

Joseph wept when their message came to him.

His brothers also came to him, bowed down before him, and said, We are your slaves.

But Joseph said to them, Don't be afraid.

Am I in the place of God?

You planned evil against me.

God planned it for good to bring about the present result and the survival or the saving of many people.

Therefore, don't be afraid.

I will take care of you and your children.

And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

See that the sovereign surrender, the sovereign plan, God's sovereign plan.

You read through a story like that, you see God's sovereignty all through it.

Joseph's brothers approach him frightened because they know what they had done.

Their fear reveals an important truth.

Unaddressed sin leaves people expecting punishment.

But God's healing works differently.

It brings truth out into the open and makes room for mercy.

Joseph does not deny what his brothers did.

You meant evil against me.

Their betrayal was real.

Their responsibility was real.

Joseph's suffering was real.

But Joseph continues and he says this God meant it for good.

See, divine sovereignty and human responsibility collide in this experience, and there is a tension not to solve.

It's a tension that I believe places us in a great place of dependency on God, but understanding that we have a responsibility as we follow the truth.

And we obey God.

Grace is given freely by God.

But it doesn't mean that we don't have a responsibility.

Grace is opposed to earning, but discipleship requires our effort.

Growth requires our effort.

And so there's this collision of God's sovereignty and human responsibility.

The brothers planned evil and doing so exercised a genuine moral decision according to their own free volitional will.

And all of this was simultaneously happening with God's sovereign hand at work to see that it was planned for good.

God working his sovereign will through his given will to us, directing all of it to his redemptive purpose.

See, God's sovereignty was present underneath the human choices, including sinful choices, without making the brothers innocent or excusing their evil.

See, human beings may mean harm.

God does not call evil good, yet evil cannot outrun God's purpose.

God can bring preservation, mercy, life, and blessing from what was intended to destroy.

And when we understand God's sovereignty over evil, we're free to forgive rather than avenge.

Joseph's redemption is not merely a private comfort.

Many people are saved.

Many lives are saved.

God turns a family's betrayal into a means of preserving a nation and literally, possibly the whole world at that time.

When some, listen, I don't remember where I got this, okay?

So we're gonna say that I came up with it.

Alright.

What someone meant to use to bury you was simply to the soil in which God planted you for resurrection.

Let me say that again.

What someone meant to use to bury you was simply the soil in which God planted you for resurrection.

No wound, sin, or painful histories beyond God's power to redeem.

Which leads me to the final action step.

And then we're gonna pray.

Because this passage says to pray.

It's this live sent.

Live sent.

What do I mean by live sent?

Hey, we're all missionaries.

When you walk out of here, you are sent on mission.

When you leave this property, you are sent on mission.

We're to live sent.

We're to live on mission.

Let your scar become part of someone else's hope.

Let your scar become part of someone else's hope.

What a way to end this series, right?

Scars can be used providentially to accomplish God's perfect will.

And he calls us to live sin it.

Which means we've got to be willing to come out out of the dark into the light.

We've got to be willing to share our story.

We've got to be willing to confess what it is that's holding us back.

We've got to be willing to step up and ask for somebody to pray for us.

We've got to be willing to talk to somebody.

We've got to be willing to pray for somebody else.

Because he says the healing will come when we confess one to one another.

Joseph's story shows that God preserving life through evil that was intended against him.

James encourages us to pray.

Pray with others.

Ask for the elders to pray.

Anoint with oil.

We're called to be a praying community.

Jesus is the fulfillment.

He bears the wounds, defeats the sin and death, and he makes wounded people into witnesses of his grace.

And any of God's faithful, any of God's, any of those who are of us that are believers, if any of us have scars, it doesn't disqualify you from being a part of what God wants to do.

By grace they become part of the testimony that points others to Jesus.

And so today we're going to pray.

And I listen.

Don't make me come back there.

So there's some people that I've asked, people that I've asked, and some of you, maybe you weren't asked, but you you feel comfortable as a as a leader.

Men and women are going to come and and they're going to they're going to have little vials of oil.

And we're going to do what James says.

We're going to anoint you with the oil.

Symbolically, when someone, when I, when I just put a little dab, I'm not going to pour the oil over your head, I promise.

But when when we touch you with the oil, it is an act of obedience for you to come.

And you don't have to share if you don't want to specifically what it is.

Just come and say, you know what?

I need prayer.

And so the people that I've asked to come, I'm going to go ahead and ask them to come make their way up to the front.

And just to be available to pray.

And when the team begins to lead us, yes, that means you can step up here.

As the team leads us in this closing time, if you don't know Christ, this is the perfect day for you to say, you know what?

My greatest need is to have a relationship with Jesus.

And we'll pray for you for that.

But for some of us, we've been hurt.

We've been wounded, and there are scars.

And for years, possibly, you've been living with this thought in your mind that I'll never be the same.

There's nothing good that can come out of this.

I mean, I could go down the list of all the words and the voices and the things that the enemy will speak into our minds.

But when you step out of that chair, you begin this process of enacting through your obedience, the power of God that brings healing in your life.

So I'm gonna I'm gonna step down here.

And our team is gonna lead us.

But I'm gonna pray for us right now.

Father, would you work?

Would you speak?

Would you do what only you can do, which is to move us as a body of people, as individuals that are part of a body.

God, you do what only you can do this morning, God.

Would you work by the power of your Holy Spirit for people to move?

And when they take that first step, it is the first step possibly toward healing and freedom, forgiveness, wholeness, the shalom that we see that God promises.

Yes, we live in a broken world, but this, my prayer is that this will be a taste.

As James says, it is a it will be raised up.

That same language to use to describe Jesus in his resurrection, God.

We want to experience your resurrection power this morning through prayer.

And so, as our team leads us this morning, I want to invite you out to step out and to come.

And one of our leaders will take just a dab of oil and put it on your forehead.

Nothing that doesn't have to be perfect.

No, it's a bit symbolic.

But I want to ask you to come.

If you want to share what it is specifically, please do.

So, Father, would you work in this time?

God, we ask you in the name of Jesus, God, would you work?

So in Christ's name we pray.

And everybody said together.

Amen.

Amen.

Would you stand with me?

And those of you that want to come for prayer, please come.