LESSON 12
Quiet time:
What kind of God do you believe He is?
What do you think God's opinion of you is?
How are your feelings for your earthly father and heavenly Father alike? How do they differ?
Last week...
Step 2 Believing God is for you.
I believe God loves me and will comfort and transform me as I explore and grieve the reality of my sin (destructive responses) and it’s effect on my life.
Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Let's talk about what kind of God he is this week.
I think most of us in this room believe God exists.
But here is what I think is most often between us and receiving His comfort.
We either have a distorted view of God, we don’t fully understand who he is and what kind of God he is.
We studied the characteristics of God in Colossians 3 and began to establish His attitude & lifestyle as our plumb line. Let's remember that is the kind of God he is to us.
If we don’t believe or understand what a loving, understanding, COMPASSIONATE God he is it will be hard to believe He blesses by us as we grieve our sin rather than punishing us for it.
If we fear God then there is no chance we will run to Him in our pain looking for comfort. We will probably run and hide, guilty and ashamed. Like a child afraid of his parent when he does something wrong.
Is it hard for you to imagine Jesus so full of love and grace?
Is it hard to imagine that you matter to him?
Is it hard to believe He will help you change?
Your understanding of God is shaped by how you experienced love & grace in your parents.
For many of us it’s distorted. We may believe God is like our absent or abusive parents. We may believe he is a critical, self serving God. We may believe we aren’t important enough for Him to even care we are hurting. But let's set aside our distorted glasses and talk about the real God.
1. He is a LOVING God. We actually talked about this briefly in the first week.
God is actually love. There is no love without God.
John wrote, “God is love.”
This means that God holds the well-being of others as His primary concern. For a full definition of love. To see love in action, study the life of Jesus. He loved often but His sacrifice on the cross for the sins was the ultimate act of love. God’s love is not a love of emotion but of action.
Paul gave us a beautiful description of real love.
Notice every description of love is a action not a feeling.
1 Corinthians 13:1-7
4 Love (God) is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, 5 never haughty or selfish or rude. Love (God) does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It (God) does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. 6 It (God) is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. 7 If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him. NLT
You know what is even more amazing. He loves us on our best day and our worst day.
While we were STILL sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Lets look at his relationship with Peter.
He was one of Jesus’ closest disciples.
Jesus knew what a wreck Peter was, He knew he would deny knowing him as they were taking him to be crucified, he knew he was going to lose his tempter and cut the ear off of one of the High Priests servants and Jesus had continually preached peace, Peter even chewed out Jesus for speaking of his death.
Peter was enthusiastic, strong-willed, impulsive, and, at times, brash. But for all his strengths, Peter had several failings in his life. Peter was all over the place.
I am probably like Peter, oh Jesus I say I love you then I turn around and get drunk or lie or gossip or degrade my husband. I say Jesus I am with you but then I am too afraid or not confident enough to witness to the people I encounter. Jesus I trust you, then I get furious when the plan I had for my life doesn’t work out.
Still, the Lord who chose Peter and he patiently continued to mold him into exactly who He intended Peter to be.
He loved him anyway. He forgave his unfaithfulness, He taught him patiently, He assumed the best of him, He used all of Peter’s mistakes to prepare him for his life.
He loves you anyway…
When you serve Him and when you don’t, when your right and when you are wrong, God even loves you when you are selfish, angry or out of control, when you scream at your kids out of pure anger. He loves you when you have a affair, drink too much, cut yourself, when you are materialistic and vain. He loves you when you are angry, selfish, self centered, rude. He loves you when you are in the pit that you dug yourself. He loves you when you don’t go to church or do your devotions, when you forget to worship him. He still loves.
He does this because his love is unconditional. It’s not based on your performance it’s based on his character. I can not even fathom that love. Best I can compare it to is love for my children and that love doesn’t even come close. I am easily angered by my children, I sacrifice for them but there are limits, I say it’s unconditional but I don’t know.
God loves you even as He is all-knowing. God knows about our lives, every detail and He will never leave you. He knew Peter would fail often. He picked him to share His life on earth with.
Nothing is beyond his love.
David, a murderer and adulterer expresses his confidence that God remembers David’s story and his pain and did not forget him. Just as he hasn’t forgotten you.
John 21:17 Jesus says to Peter (Simon)
He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You " Jesus said to him, "Tend My sheep.
In essence saying I know this is as much as you can love me, it’s ok I still love you and have confidence that you can tend my sheep.
2. That He is compassionate.
Ps.56.8 You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.
Ps. 103:8
He is merciful and tender toward those who don’t deserve it; he is slow to get angry and full of kindness and love. 9 He never bears a grudge, nor remains angry forever. 10 He has not punished us as we deserve for all our sins, 11 for his mercy toward those who fear and honor him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. 12 He has removed our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west. 13 He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic to those who reverence him. 14 For he knows we are but dust 15 and that our days are few and brief, like grass, like flowers, 16 blown by the wind and gone forever.
This is our God we can trust Him with our grief.
But God tells us in Isaiah 61:3 tell us that that He will give beauty for ashes. He redeems pain, He transforms us with our own mistakes.
Grief
What are we grieving?
Ultimately in this class we are grieving the sin and the destructive effects in our lives and the lives of others that have hurt us. To get to the place where we can fully grieve the scope of that sin we have to grieve other aspects of our decisions. Sin is complicated and has multiple layers and areas to grieve. The 12 steps asks that you grieve the sin in your own life that has hurt others and yourself. We are asking that you take a broader approach to grieving sin and look at the other details of the sin well as your destructive responses in your life.
There are several places to start but we will end the study grieving our destructive responses and believe will God to transform us with them.
There are multiple areas to grieve.
As we begin to look at the areas of our lives and areas of ourselves where we are powerless, we often realize we aren’t the people we thought we were, our lives are not how we wanted them to be. This brings about a period of mourning - mourning who we are, who we are not, where we are in our lives, and where we are not. When we truly lean in to this period of mourning, the Bible tells us we will be blessed: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” How much to do believe this? How much do you trust this? Can you trust that God will meet you where you are and be the comforter we sing about, we read about, and hope that He is?
Loss is loss. What have you lost? Is it a person close to you? A marriage? An aspiration? An idea of who you are? An idea of who someone else is? Today, we will look at the stages of grief that apply to all loss. For the purposes of Grace and Truth, we want to focus in and put special emphasis on the loss of who you thought you were and where you thought your life was heading. The first step of powerlessness brings us face to face with these things.
Grief can be a messy. The purpose of these five stages were not to tuck messy emotions into neat packages, but instead provide a framework that helps us learn to live with what we have lost. Everyone’s grief looks different. It is important to allow yourself space and permission to feel however you feel without judgement. Not everyone goes through each of these stages nor do they go through them in a prescribed order. The purpose of understanding these stages of grief is to help us cope with what feelings come up, instead of denying or devaluing them.
Stages:
Denial Denial is usually one of the first stages in the grief process. It is the numb feeling, we get when we just can’t believe things are the way they are. We can try to push away the truth and reality in this stage. Things don’t make sense. We just try to find a way to get through the day. When the denial starts to wear off, or lessen, we start asking ourselves some hard questions. Then we know the healing process is starting. We are able to move into another stage of grief.
Anger Anger is very necessary in the process of healing. Sometimes it can be scary to feel anger because it can be so intense and seems like it will never end. The more you truly let yourself feel anger, instead of pushing it down, it will lessen - it will become less intense and fade away. The more you deny it or stuff it, it will build. Have you been denying anger? Who are you angry at about your circumstance? Who have you blamed or said was responsible for something you did, or happened to you? Are you angry at God? Yourself? Another person? Under the anger, is a very vulnerable feeling of hurt. Can you feel the hurt too?
Bargaining Maybe you have found yourself making statements like: “What if I do ________, then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?” “If only ____________” “What if ___________” “I will do anything, if you make me different/ take this away from me.” We want to go back in time to change something. This wanting things to be different, sometimes leads to a feelings of guilt and shame. We have already talked about the damaging effects of shame and how important it is to fight against it.
Depression When we come face to face with the reality of who we are and where are lives are, sometimes depression is the result. This can feel like emptiness, deep sadness, and it can seem hopeless. Getting in touch with these feelings, naming them, and talking about them are important. This stage is necessary to move forward oftentimes. Staying here for a prolonged period of time should warrant some red flags though. Have you been unable to get out of bed even when you need to go to work? Take care of the kids? Tend to things that truly need to be done? Have you been depressed everyday for more than 2 weeks? Have you had thoughts of wanting to hurt yourself, or thought the world would be better off without you in it? IF the answer to ANY of those questions is yes - then we aren’t dealing with depression as a stage of grief anymore, we are dealing with something else. It is important that you reach out to someone else at this point - a trusted person, someone in GTYS, a counselor, etc.
Acceptance This is the stage where we accept ourselves and our lives for the way they are. It doesn’t mean we are necessarily happy with it, or ok with it. It means we are truly facing the reality of everything. We have come to the present moment. We aren’t resisting anymore. Instead of denying feelings, we experience them (even uncomfortable ones), we are able to grow here, to evolve, to change. This is where we can connect to the Holy Spirit and see how God wants to use us. We are able to hear Him more easily and thus be obedient to where He is leading us.
It is so important to give grief a place to exist and to give grief a voice - no matter what, you have permission to grieve ANYTHING. That means people who are wrong for us - the relationship and connection we had to them, as well as the hopes, dreams, and expectations we held for the relationship with them. It means grieving the boyfriend that could never grow up, the mom who was never around, or the friend who always made herself the center of attention.
Grief is not a thing that we go through and then forget about. This process changes us, shapes us, and alters us. We move forward different than we were when we started. Peace comes not when you’ve cried x number of tears or written x number of unsent letters, or spent x amount of time thinking about a thing. Peace comes when your grief has been witnessed and understood. Peace comes when this experience is weaved into the storyline of your life in way that doesn’t ask you abandon yourself or deny your experience.
What are you grieving today?
God loves you so much he says He collects your tears in a bottle. We are going to have a quiet time, take these pieces of paper and write down what you are grieving and place them in this bottle. No one will read these but we are offering our pain to God and asking him to comfort us. Is it the fact that you are not who you were created to be, is it the pain you have caused yourself or someone else as you operate out of your hurt. Is it something you have lost?