2025-03-02 Healing from Sin

Alright, we are continuing our / / Following Jesus series. Looking at what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ in 2025 in South Florida!

To sum up what we talked about last, let me use the quote from Pete Scazzaro that I shared, / / “It is impossible to be spiritually mature, while remaining emotionally immature.”

Now, I’m not going to get into that, because that was last week, so if you missed it, make sure you grab the notes from the table in the lobby, and go back and watch it this week.

But I will say this. If you got anything out of last week, let it be this, / / Don’t let anything come between you and becoming more like Jesus.

If you saw the video I sent out this past Wednesday, I quoted from my textbook on the gospels which says, / / “Jesus’ extraordinary authority provokes authentic discipleship. The true disciple approaches Jesus in awe and humility and gives up all to follow him.”

When you think about this process of discipleship, of spiritual formation, what is it that is the central focus for you?

We keep saying this line, / / Be WITH Jesus // Become LIKE Jesus // DO What Jesus Did

Have you seen yet that the order matters?

We don’t start with doing the things.

We don’t start with the ministry.

We don’t start with the power and authority and miracles and prophecy and whatever else.

We start with being with Jesus.

That’s what these spiritual disciplines are all about.

Now, I want to point out a distinction between the disciples we read about in Scripture, and our journey of discipleship.

2000 years ago, Jesus, being in human form called humans to follow him on this earth, and said that in so doing they were also with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

We, being spiritual by nature, are called to spiritually follow Jesus with our physical lives toward the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So it is not that we pursue Jesus only, but that we pursue God in His fullness.

/ / Being a disciple of Jesus means pursuing the Father and the Holy Spirit as well.

How do I know this? Because that’s exactly what happened with the disciples 2000 years ago:

In John 14:8-9 Philip, one of Jesus disciples asks him (NLT), / / “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me HAS seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?”

3 chapters later, in what we call Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, in John 17:20-23, he says, / / “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.”

Being WITH Jesus is being WITH the Father.

What about the Holy Spirit?

Let’s go back up to John 14 for a second. John 14:15-17, / / “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

Who is this “Helper, the Spirit of truth”?

He clarifies a few verses later, John 14:26, / / “…the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name…”

So, I want you to hear this this morning. / / Becoming a true disciple of Jesus puts us in the same closeness to the Father AND the Holy Spirit.

These are not intended to be multiple events at different times. Jesus said, when you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.

Likewise, Ephesians 1:13-14 says that when we believe in Jesus Christ we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. / / In him (Jesus) you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

What does that mean? It means that although we experience times of refreshing, where we feel the indwelling of the Spirit, we feel the presence of God in the room, we pray, “Come Holy Spirit” We sing, “Let your presence fill this place”, we may even feel like we are being “filled”… the whole time we have already had him.

I want to ask you a question, but I need you to oblige me for a second here, we’re going to jump into a bit of theology and doctrine for a second.

Nothing scary. Theology is simply the study of the nature of God and religious belief. And Doctrine are those things we as the church have come to believe and teach. So you have the study and the conclusion.

There are two terms you may or may not have heard of:

/ / Cessationism and Continuationism

/ / Cessationism is the belief that the gifts of the Holy Spirit stopped at the end of the Apostolic age. It’s based on 1 Corinthians 13:8 when Paul says, / / As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

Let me clarify, this is now what we believe as a church.

Cessationists believe that after the Apostolic age, let’s say 90-96 AD, the gifts just stopped. No more prophecy, no more miracles, no more healing. Most don’t even believe that God ‘speaks’ today - except through the bible itself. Now, be careful, don’t throw them out, ok, they are still our brothers and sisters in Christ, so let’s always keep that in mind.

And we would be good to remember, for every time you think that someone else is crazy, there’s someone on the other side that thinks you are crazy too.

On the other side you have / / Continuationism… I think you can guess what that belief is. The gifts continue. God still speaks, The Holy Spirit is still moving in and through his people in supernatural ways.

Let me clarify, this IS what we believe as a church.

Why do we believe this? It’s not because we think we feel it, or think we see it. Doctrine is not built on feelings, it’s built on the concrete Word of God found in Scripture. So, we keep reading Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth. Yes, he says in chapter 13 that these gifts will cease. Sure. And he finishes that chapter with, / / So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13)

So I guess in some way someone could say, “See, if only those three remain, and none of those are gifts related, then vs 8 must be true. The gifts ceased.”

BUT… read the next verse. We have to remember, Paul did not write this with chapter and verse, so this is just a continuing statement.. Chapter 14:1, / / Pursue love, AND EARNESTLY DESIRE the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

Now, why would Paul tell people that it’s going to end with him and the other apostles, but then tell people, who will outlive him, who will live beyond the apostolic age, to pursue the spiritual gifts?

So, we confess that the gifts are still very much alive and well through the power and work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers.

Now to the question I want to ask, because this is the great equalizer, ok, and why we need to be careful.

/ / Do you think that a cessationist, who does not believe in the current operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is any less filled with the Holy Spirit?

Let me read you something a statement: / / “To understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit, you go to the New Testament. And the Holy Spirit is the source of divine revelation; He is the author of Holy Scripture; He is the one who illuminates the believer. We have been given the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. We have an anointing from God. It’s an amazing gift that the Holy Spirit is to us for the understanding of Holy Scripture. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, internally. The Holy Spirit drives us to Christ. The Holy Spirit helps our prayers, with groanings that can’t be uttered. The Holy Spirit secures us and gives us assurance so that we cry, “Abba, Father.” The primary work of the Holy Spirit, the wondrous work, is to conforming us to Christ, making us more and more like Christ, 2 Corinthians 3:18, “from one level of glory to the next, as we gaze at Christ.”

Any guesses who said that?

A man by the name of John MacArthur. Probably the most adamant, confessed Calvinist and cessationist alive today, both of which I do not agree with.

He has a completely different take on the continued work and experience of the Holy Spirit in our lives but still confesses the believer has received the Holy Spirit and is at work in them.

My point is this. Whether you experience, feel, or see the ministry and work of the Holy Spirit in or around you, IF you have confessed Jesus Christ as Lord of your life, your savior, the one who has redeemed you and you have made a conscious choice to follow Him, you HAVE received the Holy Spirit. You have been sealed as a guarantee of your eternal salvation AND He is at work in you transforming you to become more like Christ as you follow Him!

And of that me and John MacArthur agree.

Why that big rabbit trail?

To define for us what/ / 21st century discipleship is all about. Father, Son & Holy Spirit, alive and active in the life of the believer as we follow God’s ways.

These disciplines we are talking about work in the order that we describe them.

Be WITH Jesus…Become LIKE Jesus… DO what Jesus did

/ / The process of Discipleship, which is Spiritual Formation, must start with being WITH Jesus.

And we do that by following the Spiritual Disciplines / Practices.

You don’t fast to be hungry physically

You fast to get close to Jesus

You don’t read your bible to be religious or smart

You read your bible to get to know Jesus

You don’t pray to check the box

You pray to commune with the Father

And so on and so forth, we could go through all of them…

This statement sums it up quite nicely. / / “We look at the Bible, we see Christ revealed. The Holy Spirit illuminates Christ as revealed in Scripture, and then changes us into His image. These are the things the Holy Spirit is really doing!”

And now I have quoted John MacArthur more today than the rest of my life total.

So, where do we go from here?

Last week we talked about healing from emotional pain to become more whole because emotional immaturity will stop Spiritual development.

Today we are going to talk about / / Healing from Sin . You’ll notice I left the top title blank because I didn’t want to cause trauma as you received the notes this morning and saw we were talking about Sin today.

The first thing we need to do when talking about sin is define that Sin is not simply the bad things you do that you stop doing when you get saved.

Sin is a much bigger, but also, in some ways, much simpler concept than I think most of the church has been talking about.

I like how John Mark Comer describes this world that we live in when talking about sin. He says, “The world is beautiful. It’s quiet and calm and full of goodness. But when I drive the streets of LA, it is glaringly obvious that something is wrong with the world. I see beauty in the arts, architecture, culture, people doing life together. And I see poverty, inequality, addiction, loneliness, the breakdown of relationships. What if the city is a parable for the soul? What if all of us are both beautiful and deeply broken at the same time? What if we need to be saved?”

How can there be beauty and depravity in the same space?

How can there be right and wrong coexisting in our midst?

And yet it is exactly true, and sin, is the word the Bible uses to describe what is wrong with the world.

/ / How do you view sin?

Just think about that for a second. What comes to mind first when you think of sin?

Often times our own personal history plays a big role in how we view sin.

If you grew up in the church, and depending on which denomination you grew up in, you might think you have a pretty good understanding.

The Church I grew up in. I think as a teenager at least, it boiled down to, don’t curse, don’t smoke, don’t drink, make sure you go to church and tithe.

We were kind of given the dos and don’ts and sent on our way.

If you’re new to faith, newer to following Jesus, maybe you aren’t quite sure what sin is.

Maybe all you know is you don’t like the word…

/ / Even if people struggle with how to define it, pretty much everyone agrees, humanity has a problem.

It’s easy to think that sin is just what we would consider to be / / “the bad things”

We gossip, lie, cheat on our taxes, cuss a little, drink too much, eat too much…

Or maybe we just think about / / “the really bad things”:

Murder

Cheating on your spouse

Fraud

Stealing

Things that you might say we would go “straight to jail” over.

And really, these are things that are visible on the outside.

And / / the problem is not as simple as, “we do bad things”, the real problem is that something in us WANTS to do those things.

Paul says in Romans 7:15, 18-19, / / For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Isn’t that what we’re trying to do here? Become like Jesus? Shouldn’t wanting to be good, and wanting to follow Jesus simply just mean we’ll end up doing that with no issues? Why is it, or how is it that we can’t seem to shake this sin problem?

What / / Paul is describing is an addicted person. Not wanting to do something, and continuing to do it, is the defining marker of an addict.

When I first started attending 12 step meetings that was one of the biggest and most helpful conversations I had.

It started with this question, “Can you quit?”

“Of course I can quit. I’ve quit plenty of times…”

/ / “But, if you stop, can you stay stopped?”

Oh…. Right.

/ / And this is not a “you’re a bad person” vs. “you’re a good person”.

John Mark Comer says, / / “Calling human beings sinful is no more judgmental than a doctor telling someone they have a heart condition. It’s just true.”

Now, before we get to far. We’re not just talking about un-fun things here. There is / / Good News!

The angel that comes to Joseph in a dream says to him in Matthew 1:21, / / “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

The Hebrew word for / / Jesus, Yeshua, means to save, to deliver, or God saves.

And this is exactly what God is saving us from through the work of Jesus Christ, our sins.

That is really GOOD NEWS. Well, I turned 43 this past week, and I remember being 4 years old and giving my life to Jesus. Me and my mom had just had a conversation in the living room, she had gone into the kitchen, and I remember coming into the kitchen and saying to her, “Mom, I just asked Jesus into my heart…”

That’s 39 years ago. And do you want to know the truth about me. I still sin.

I still have this issue of sin in my life.

I’m not saying I’m out there murdering or slandering, cursing like a sailor or anything like that, but man, I thought I would’ve been perfect by now. From glory to glory, right?

So, what’s going on?

First things first, and this is where we need to define sin. So, that’s our first question today:

/ / What is sin?

We probably know the big verses about sin.

Romans 6:23, / / For the wages of sin is death…

Romans 3:23, / / For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Great, but what is it? if we don’t truly know what Sin is, and how it affects us, those verses can actually end up meaning very little.

/ / If we do not understand sin, we will live thinking we have been saved from the “big/bad stuff” while the little stuff is actually wreaking the most havoc in our lives.

So, I want to define this word, sin, and then we will look at a couple different aspects of it.

Let’s look at the word used in those two verses I just read, Romans 3:23, and 6:23

/ / for all have sinned….and the wages of sin is death…

/ / sin [hamartia] – is correctly translated directly as sin, but also offense.

/ / offense means a breach of a law or rule; an illegal act

So, simply put, / / sin is breaking the law. Again, that can feel like it’s the big things that matter, right?

But this word, / / hamartia is further defined in this way:

To be without a share in

To miss the mark

To miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honor, to do or go wrong

I want to zero in here on this small phrase, / / to miss the mark.

What mark are we missing?

Psalm 19:7-9 says, / / The law of the Lord is perfect… the precepts [mandates] of the Lord are right… the commandment of the Lord is pure… the rules of the Lord are true…

And then Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:48, He’s talking about how we should live and how we should love one another and ends with this thought, / / “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

That’s a bit heavy, right? Is perfection the goal?

Yes, it actually is. / / Jesus is perfect, and the goal is to become LIKE him.

Now, before you are like, “Wow, this place just went full legalism, i’m out…” track with me, ok. does that mean we expect perfection? Probably not on this side of heaven. If we’re honest.

But this is what we must understand. / / Sin is a great equalizer of all humanity. No one is without sin. The NLT of Romans 3:23 says, we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

This is why I lean into this definition, “to miss the mark.”

If the goal is perfection, picture every action you take as you shooting an arrow at a target. If you hit the bullseye, congratulations, you were perfect. If you miss, even if you missed by just the smallest margin of error… People can’t be like, “WORST. SHOT. EVER.” No, you just. Missed. The. Mark.

A big issue I see in Christian social media these days is people who get frustrated with the church and it’s propensity for legalism or superiority, they come back at it with, “Jesus hung out with sinners… he accepts us the way we are… we don’t need to change…”

Wrong. He loves us the way we are. He gave his life through excruciating torture and being hung on a cross to die to save you from the sin that is killing you.

Jesus never gave anyone a pass for sin, not the smallest or biggest.

He was perfect and called people to follow him into the Kingdom of God which does not contain sin.

/ / Sin is not defined by our ability. Sin is defined by the perfection of God.

Anything less than that is sin. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The perfection of God.

So whether it is murder, or lying, stealing or holding anger in your heart toward someone, or muttering words as you drive away from the round about when buddy guy almost hits you… whatever we do in our lives that is less than perfect… is missing the mark and that is sin.

Am I being to harsh? Or maybe I’m being to simplistic?

I don’t think so. This is why John Mark says that calling humanity sinful is no different than a doctor telling someone they have a heart condition. It’s just the truth if it’s true. If you are a human, you have been born into a world of sin, and as such, you have, my guess, not live a perfect life according to the perfection of God. And if that is the case. You have sinned.

So, let’s define sin a bit further by talking a bit of theology here, ok:

There are three areas of sin:

/ / Sin done BY us

We are the one who misses the mark…

We mess up in some way

We are unkind

Shame someone

Lie

Dishonor our parents

We act in some way that proves we are not perfect, adding to the story of sin around us in this world.

Cornelius Plantinga, a theologian said that this realm of / / sin is “the culpable disturbance of shalom.”

Meaning it is the cause of a lack of God’s peace and harmony in this earth.

/ / God has a desired harmony for this world, but sin is at work in the world to rip apart that harmony.

/ / Sin done TO us

We’ve all been sinned against…

We’ve been hurt, abused, wounded, betrayed, slandered

Sin isn’t just about what we do, we have been both perpetrator AND victim.

And this is important because / / our woundedness becomes the cause of a lot of our wickedness.

Think of what we looked at last week. The trauma we have gone through comes up in ways that have formed us, or deformed us, and can inflict pain and hurt on others. Hurt people…hurt people…

Our pain, and memories that we carry in our bodies, we tragically pass them on to those around us, and often those closest to us.

We probably all know a story or two of someone who was abused, and although they wouldn’t want to turn out this way, became an abuser.

Someone who suffered under the sins of an alcoholic, and in their own lives turned to substances for comfort and deflecting pain.

Someone who was cheated on, and it only seemed like a matter of time before they became the cheater themselves.

Perfectionists who got it from their parents.

The list goes on and on.

This is why last week we focused on past trauma and emotional pain in our lives. We need true and deep healing from our memories of the past.

/ / Sin done AROUND us

This is one that isn’t talked about as often, we can actually miss it entirely.

We might recognize the sin in the world around us, but we don’t as often look at the effect it has one us.

We know this to be true. Our environment has a way of shaping and moulding us. This is not just about the sin we do, or even the sin done directly to us, but the world we live in, the atmospheres we work in and play in – has a deforming effect on us. Like second hand smoke - you can’t be blamed for someone else’s actions, but we know being in that atmosphere can literally be deadly.

/ / The world we live in has its way of pushing us away from how Jesus would live and toward how the world would live. We know this to be true.

/ / Three Areas: Sin done BY us, Sin done TO us, Sin done AROUND us.

And the point is not to point blame at everyone around, “See, I’m only 1/3 of the problem!” The point is to see that we are all sick in need of a healer.

There’s this great line in 12 Step talking about being hurt and impacted by other people, that says, / / Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.

We’ve talked a little bit about some of the disciples in scripture. Matthew would have been rejected by the Jewish community as his embrace of his role as a tax collector would have been a rejection of his faith and community. And so Jesus calls him, and he follows, and Luke 5:27-32 says that he makes a great feast at his house, and invites Jesus.

Now, he just decided to follow Jesus, who do you think his friends are?

Who is he going to invite over for this feast? Other tax collectors and sinners.

vs 30-32 says, / / But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor – sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

What does Jesus say about those who know they are sinners. They are sick. And he is the doctor.

/ / Our discipleship to Jesus takes us on a journey of healing from the sins done by us, sins done to us, and sins done around us.

And it is an ongoing journey, until we are perfected like Christ in heaven.

/ / Jesus’ point in Luke 5 is not that some people are healthy and others are sick, it’s that some know they are sick, and some are unwilling to recognize their own sickness.

Read it again, / / “I have come not to call those who THINK they are righteous, but those who KNOW they are sinners…”

All of us are sick, some of us just know it.

And in the same way last week we looked at the ability to deny, detach, or drug in the experience of pain, we are often encouraged in this world to deny, ignore, or cover up our sin so that we won’t feel the symptoms but never deal with the disease.

So, we have these three areas of sin: sin done by us, to us, and around us.

Robert Mulholland, who was professor of NT studies at Asbury Seminary, described Four Layers of sin. And this is important to see to help us identify the areas of our lives and hearts we need healing.

If we are sick and Jesus is the doctor we might have to go through the process of diagnosis.

Sometimes when it comes to being sick we can say, “Oh, it’s not so bad…” but I’m not a doctor, and I don’t know, and left unchecked, sometimes things fester and grow until we can’t control them.

So, four layers of sin:

/ / 1. Gross Sins

This isn’t Gross like ewww… but gross like major sins. Now, before you think, “Aren’t all sins gross?” or “Aren’t all sins the same in the eyes of the Lord.” You wouldn’t be wrong. But we could call these the “easy to spot” sins.

In Galatians 5, Paul makes a distinction about what our lives look like when we follow the desires of the flesh vs. following the Holy Spirit. One produces the Fruit of the Spirit, the other produces this list he describes in (19-21) / / Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Often times in people’s recognition of needing Jesus, they also recognize these things need to go.

Gross sins are the first ones we more easily kick to the curb. And sometimes it is a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit as we are saved and filled, that we no longer deal with certain issues. Sometimes they work out in time, but we understand, these things need to go and go as quickly as possible. They are “easily recognizable as bad”.

/ / 2. Conscious Sins

These are things that are often socially acceptable, and sometimes even celebrated in our current culture, but are just not the way of Jesus.

Materialism, Bragging, Dirty TV, Gossip, Cussing / Swearing, Crude humor, White lies, Negativity, Rudeness

They are called Conscious Sins because we can look at that list and know that they are contrary to the way of Jesus, but also, “What’s a little white lie going to do???”

We choose to do them, even knowing that if Jesus was sitting next to us on the couch, we might actually skip over that show on Netflix…

The problem here is that we are actively NOT choosing to surrender our will to Jesus.

WE are still deciding what WE can and cannot do in our lives like WE have the power to decide what is morally acceptable, or missing the mark or not.

Again, go back to the definition of sin – this isn’t some gross, horrible sin, it’s the little things that consistently miss the mark.

And I have noticed, the more committed I am to following Jesus, the more I pray, Your will be done, NOT mine, and the more I employ the spiritual disciplines that lead toward transformation to become more like Christ, the more I realize the Spirit of God highlights these things and I desire them less and less until not at all… IF I give way to the Spirit’s leading.

You want to know the most amazing part. The things that I thought I would miss before, so I didn’t necessarily pray about giving them up, but as I followed Jesus, I have found I don’t need them, I don’t want them, I don’t miss them.

And I’m not giving you a predetermined list here. I’m saying, as you follow Jesus, you might notice your life becoming narrower and narrower, but on that narrow path you experience more life. Sounds like something Jesus might have said, eh?

What did we read Paul say? / / The FLESH will desire these things. The SPIRIT is not compatible. So, we read vs 19-21, the effect of the desires of the flesh. Vs 22-23 describe the fruit of the Spirit, the effect if we make way for God to work in our lives. And vs 24-25 gives us the key to that process.

(24-25) / / And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

To follow the Spirit, we must crucify the flesh. They are incompatible with each other. And Jesus knew this, which is why he prayed all the more earnestly to the point of sweating blood, “Not my will (desire), but YOURS be done.”

/ / 3. Unconscious Sins

Unconscious sins play out in three different ways.

First, / / Sins of Omission.

The contrast being sins of omission vs commission. Commission being I committed a sin, or an act. Omission being what we do NOT do that is missing the mark.

We don’t call our friends when they are suffering.

We don’t speak up with when we need to.

We ignore the poor

Second, / / Sins of Motivation.

Maybe we are doing the right things: serve the poor, speak up for truth, practice the spiritual disciplines, but we are doing it for the wrong reasons.

Third, / / Sins of Dysfunctional Relational Patterns.

This is how people emotionally experience us – defensive, moody, negative, judgmental, overly talkative - they can’t get a word in edgewise.

In this third layer, we move past what we readily recognize as sin and into what in the psychology world they describe as the / / “shadow”, or the unconscious aspect of the personality.

Our ‘shadow’ is mirky and unclear. It can be difficult to distinguish between motives sometimes, are we doing something out of virtue, or as a vice?

And as our shadow is exposed, like we talked about last week, the closer we get to Jesus, and the more we quiet our lives to His rhythms, through prayer and deepening relationships in Christian community, the more that is revealed about our deep parts that show pain and emotional wounding.

And it can feel very exposing, humiliating, and we may fight with feeling shame.

But as we talked through last week, this revealing is a key step in the process of healing.

/ / 4. Attachments

The fourth layer of sin is our attachments, or in biblical terminology, idols.

Dr. Mulholland called them “trust structures”.

Father Thomas Keating calls them our “emotional programs for happiness”

Essentially, this is what we believe we need to be happy and at peace. And often times they are not bad at all, they can be very good, and God given, but unordered they can become idols.

The real tell is when we go through something and need them to be ok.

Health, Marriage, Children, Job/Career, Success, Wealth, Beauty.

Youth, Retirement, Reputation, Plans, Friends, Food/Drink, Pleasure.

All good. And often we can see how these things are gifts from God.

The problem is when these things that are truly, and in good ways a source of happiness, become a source of unhappiness.

/ / The problem isn’t the thing itself, which we can easily see as a gift from our Loving Father.

The problem is the attachment to the gift.

Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit Priest and psychotherapist, said, / / “If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.”

And this is actually the area where we most need the healing and salvation of Jesus, because it is the most unbeknownst to us. It’s the most hidden, and it’s the hardest to let go of.

We quoted Matthew 16:25 last week, / / “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

John Mark Comer expands on that thought, / / “As long as you need your life to go a certain way to be happy and at peace, you will never be happy and at peace.”

This is really what Paul talks about in Philippians 4:11, / / …I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

/ / Content there means sufficient for one’s self, independent of external circumstances, happy and satisfied with one’s current situation, no matter what.

How was he content in any situation? (13) / / I can do all things through HIM who strengthens me.

This is a return to looking to our Creator for our true internal wellbeing and not the things around us, even if they have been given to us by the Creator. / / All sin and idolatry at its root, is our soul searching for happiness and love, but by looking to the created rather than the Creator.

This is why the invitation of Jesus is to detach ourselves from the things of this world, deny yourself, take up your cross, and attach yourself to Jesus, follow Jesus.

So, let’s just take these four layers and look at it in the context of one issue: Anger

The / / Gross Layer would play out in murder, violence, domestic abuse, road rage.

The / / Conscious Layer would be name calling, yelling at our spouse, mouthing profanities.

The / / Unconscious Layer would be recognizing we would NEVER hit someone, or even flip a lid and yell uncontrollably, but it comes out in being passive aggressive, or the silent treatment, or the cold shoulder. We still feel that contempt in our heart.

The / / Attachment Layer would look something like this. Let’s say Kaylee has a test and she fails that test, and her grade sinks. Now, I’m not hitting her, I’m not yelling at her, I’m not shaming her or anything like that, yet, inside, I’m angry, or stressed out, because I emotionally need her to do well in school to live up to my plans for her life.

The broken situation reveals brokenness in my heart.

I am still not completely happy in God.

My happiness, that contentment is thrown off by a situation with my daughter, revealing I have something going on in my heart.

You might think, that’s a stretch Pastor Rob. How deep are we going here?

I get it, and that’s the point.

/ / Jesus’ invitation to be healed of our sin is an invitation to every nook and cranny of our lives.

From the biggest, grossest, most horrifyingly obvious sin, to the seemingly simple, yet deeply profound ways we have not yet given our hearts and minds over to the healing of Jesus to find true and genuine contentment in Him.

These are the most intimate, internal feelings of the heart that God actually wants to meet in us.

The invitation of Jesus is to experience Him as healer on every level of our being.

This is about accepting with our whole heart the invitation to follow God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and as we employ these disciplines and practices of getting to know Him, we are brought into an awareness of areas of our lives that He wants to heal.

But we have to be willing to walk that road. This starts with a willingness to be seen by God in all areas of our lives, and to pray, “I want YOUR will more than my own.”

So, what do we do when these things are brought to our attention? Maybe in silent prayer or as we read scripture as we continue to fast, we suddenly find ourselves recognizing unhealthy patterns or behaviors in our lives. What do we do?

/ / Practice: Confession

In the same way we looked at our emotions and feelings last week, and saw the need to name them so we can heal, this process of finding healing from sin involves us coming to God in confession and giving it over to Him as He reveals.

David prayed in Psalms 139:23-24, / / Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Romans 2:4 (NLT) / / Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sins?

It is in the place of the Father’s great love for us that as the Holy Spirit reveals sin to us we see that as opportunity for confession to find healing in Jesus Christ.

We must see sin as a sickness and a disease that we need healing from. And confession is the path to that healing.

In 12-step program we say, / / “We are only as sick as the secrets we keep.”

Sometimes we don’t even know the secret. Think of some of these things we’ve talked about today. Those obvious sins, sure, we see them easily and can work to change. But the deeper things, layer 3 and 4, the unconscious and the attachment levels of sin, often times there is nothing at all we can do BUT come to Jesus and ask for healing. ONLY He can heal and save us. HE deals with sin. OUR Job is to confess our secrets.

1 John 1:9 says, / / If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This is why we are talking about community so much, because no one should have to navigate all of this alone.

Sometimes there are things we can simply go to God in prayer, confessing in our own heart and words to God. And other times we need opportunity and space to allow others to rally around us.

James 5:16 says, / / …confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

And that might be different for you if this isn’t a tradition you have held.

In the evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic world our confession has been mostly in our heads and hearts before God in quiet by ourselves.

We bow our heads and tell no one, and I think that is in part because we are hoping we will be freed from our issues and sins while praying fervently that no one ever finds out.

But true confession in Christian community takes humbling ourselves and baring our souls before those who we walk with and commune with.

When was the last time you were honest with someone and said, “Man, I don’t know why, but I just get so angry when my kids don’t listen. I don’t know what to do with it… and I yell, and then afterwards I feel bad.”

And that can be scary because some of us may have gone through situations where the Christian community didn’t always feel safe. And I am deeply sorry if that has been your experience.

Like I said last week, if you don’t feel safe to do that, if you don’t feel like you have people to do that with, that’s the first goal, give yourself to the community of the believers and ask Jesus to heal the wounds that are causing you to fear true connection and community.

One of the most powerful aspects of the 12-step program is coming to the point where you are willing to say openly in front of others, “Hi, my name is ______, and I’m an alcoholic.” or a drug addict, or I’m addicted to food, or whatever the case may be.

So our homework for this week is:

/ / Keep employing these practices to the best of your ability.

I know, we haven’t gone too deep into some of them, but you can start with the simply ones.

Pray everyday in silence and solitude before God.

Read Scripture everyday, or as often as you can.

Join us in fasting on Wednesdays

Join us in community - Thursday prayer meeting, women’s group, men’s group, invite people over, get to know people, develop relationships.

Ask God to reveal to you how you can increase in generosity.

Begin to adopt and do these practices.

/ / Then when things come up, whether it is memories or emotional pain that we talked about last week, or areas of sin in your life, either sin you have done, sin done to you or sin in your world, begin to pray and ask for healing, and see if you can schedule some time to talk with someone you trust to pray with you.

We need to normalize vulnerability.

We need to normalize coming to each other in humility.

We need to normalize communication and conversation, standing with one another, walking together, praying for one another, so that we can experience healing.

Let’s pray!