God Can Heal Your Family’s Pain
By: Jen Stewart
This is a total bummer way to start a message – with the bad news that pain is universal and it’s unavoidable. But look at your family life. You can see that this is the truth. Pain has hit all of our families at various times or it will hit or you know a family that it has hit. Sometimes it’s totally unavoidable. There’s nothing you can do sometimes to avoid the pain and the conflict that happens within families. And there are some root causes of pain. If you observe family life in general there are some things that continue to come up again and again.
Two primary causes of pain:
Disrespect: This is an attitude of rebellion with your parents and it leads to verbal conflict.
You know, it’s the arguments started by your words. If your parents walk in and they say, “I need you to take out the trash,” and you don’t even look up from what you’re doing… you just say, “Later!” or “I did it last week!” or you just blow them off somehow, that’s disrespectful. These kind of disrespectful things, they lead to blowups like World War III in your home. That’s disrespect.
Disobedience: These are acts of rebellion against your parents and it leads to you breaking their rules.
It could be in the form of lying, sneaking around, not even caring what they think. Maybe you’ve gone to that point. And the thing that stinks about disrespect and disobedience is, nobody taught us how to do these things. Nobody taught us how to be disrespectful or disobedient. It’s part of our nature. The reason why is there’s an underlying cause. The key word is “Sin.” That’s the foundation for these kinds of attitudes and actions. Sin is an attitude of rebellion against God. It’s a “me first” attitude. Sin truly is the cause of every pain in the world.
Now maybe someone will say, “Jen, wait. My dad’s got cancer. That’s a cause of pain. Are you saying my sin caused my dad’s cancer?” No. Not your sin. But when sin entered the world it affected God’s perfect plan on everybody. Not sin like your sin or your dad’s sin, but Sin with a capital “S” is the reason why there are things like cancer, because God’s plan is sort of messed up by sin. You may say, “My parents are getting a divorce. That’s because of my sin?” No it’s not because of your sin. But divorce or separation in general is the result of Sin with a capital S. Hard hearts are the result of sin. Being unwilling to forgive is the result of sin. All the pain in the world is a result of sin. But the point I want you to see right now is this. There are some things that you cannot control in your life. There are some things you don’t need to worry about controlling because you can’t. But there are two things that you can control. You can control your attitude. And you can control your actions. We just talked about two actions didn’t we? The disrespect and the disobedience. That’s what God expects you to deal with.
Alright… that was the sad part of my message for you. Now let’s talk about some hope!
1. God CARES about your pain more than you do
2 Corinthians says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Father who is full of mercy and he is the God of all comfort. He comforts us every time we have trouble so we can comfort others when they have trouble. We can comfort them with the same comfort that God gives us.”
God is a God of comfort. When we have pain in our lives, God wants to bring the comfort. He wants to move in and deal with that. He cares about our pain. God is the only thing that will ultimately comfort you or I when we have pain. If you’re running somewhere else for comfort, you’re running to the wrong place. So many of us, we run to our friends when we need some comfort. They comfort us as best as they can. But ultimately they’re going to fall short. That’s not the role that they need to play. Some of us are looking for love. We go to relationship after relationship after relationship. Ultimately that comfort is going to fail and leave us feeling empty. Those things may provide a kind of comfort for a short time but ultimately they’ll leave you empty. Those things will not comfort you because God is the only one who can comfort us. That’s a reason for hope. Not only can he comfort us, but he wants to. He cares about your pain. He cares about your pain even more than you. That’s the first reason that there’s hope.
2. God CAN HEAL every wound
God is also a God of healing. All through this love letter the Bible, God portrays himself as the God of healing. If you look in the New Testament, you see that God gives us a picture of himself in the person of Jesus Christ. We see that, as Jesus walked around on this earth, He was a great physician; He was the one who brought healing.
Matthew 4, “Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.”
That was a role that Jesus played. He was a healer. Then if you’ll look at the end of the book you’ll see God’s promise for eternity. You see that God wants to heal every disease. That God wants to wipe away every tear. That’s his promise if you have a relationship with him. You and I get to experience eternity with health and wholeness and true life. That’s God’s promise. But it’s not just a promise for the future sometime. God makes that promise for you and I today. God wants to heal our wounds.
“If anyone belongs to Christ, he is made new. Old things have gone. Everything is made new.”
If you’re a Christian, when you began this relationship with him; you were transformed. God has taken your old life and He has put it away and He is making you a brand new person. You were spiritually clueless, but now you’re spiritually alive. That’s a radical transformation. I don’t know if you and I really understand what that’s all about. It’s a little bit like the transformation that happens to a caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly. Imagine you’re a caterpillar – fat and hairy and cruising around inch by inch, eating leaves. Then one day something happens. You say, “I want to make a cocoon.” You cocoon yourself up, take a two-week nap and wake up and stretch and wow! You’ve got wings. You’re flapping around. You don’t have to inch along any more. You can fly! You don’t have to worry about little kids scooping you up and putting you in a jar. You’re flying. But imagine you’re this butterfly now, beautiful, flying around and you decide, “I kind of liked it as a caterpillar. I’m going to land and just start crawling around inch-by-inch again. I’m going to fold my wings down.” That just doesn’t happen. It’s ridiculous.
But some of us spiritually that’s exactly what we do. God makes us new. That means He’s helping us turn away from our old life… but oftentimes we just fall right back into our old lives. That’s not what’s supposed to happen. It’s just like being a butterfly that crawls around like a caterpillar. God has given you a new life and He’s making you more and more like Him. That’s hope. God cares more about your pain than you do. That’s hope. And God can heal every wound. There’s hope.
So what do you do with all this hope? I have a couple action steps for you. You can go back to your family and rewrite the role that you played as you lean on Christ’s strength. You can come to your family and have new eyes as you interact with them.
1. DRAW near to God
There’s a story in the Bible about a woman who was in pain. She’d been in pain for years. She had this disease in which she was hemorrhaging, bleeding. She couldn’t do anything to help herself physically. The disease that she had made her unclean by society’s standards. She was an outcast. But she heard about this man named Jesus and she heard a rumor that maybe He could heal her. So she tried to draw near to him.
“When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and she touched his cloak because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed.’”
And she was. She was made whole. She was given a fresh start on life. She took this point literally. She drew near to the source of healing. She drew near to God. That’s the first step for you and for me. That we draw near to God, we experience the nearness of God.
It has been really cool lately. It’s warming up, but think back to December. Have you ever stood by a bonfire? If it was like 20 degrees outside we would all be huddled as close to it as we possibly could without searing our flesh because we want to experience the warmth that comes from that fire. We want to know what it’s like to feel warm again. We’re getting as close as we can to the source of heat. The same with God; you and I can draw near to God and experience God’s goodness. We can experience God’s peace even when there’s nothing peaceful going on in our home life. We can experience God’s grace again and again when we mess up. And we can experience God’s healing for the wounds that run deep within us. Draw near to God.
James says “Come near to God and God will come near to you. You’re sinners so clean out the sin in your life. You’re trying to follow God and the world at the same time.”
That’s the problem so many of us have. We want to draw near to God, there’s a part of us that does, so we try God’s way a little bit. But we also look at the world’s way. We try the world’s way at the same time. We’re pulled in these two opposite directions and it’s killing us. I know about this form of torture they used in the Middle Ages. If they wanted to really hurt somebody – to kill them – they would take their hands and tie them with a rope to a horse. Then they’d take their feet and tie them with a rope to another horse. They’d hit both the horses, the horses would take off and you can imagine what would happen.
The point I’m trying to make is this: Some of you are doing this to yourselves. Some of you are doing this by your own choices. You’re trying to live two totally opposite ways at the same time. It’s destroying you. There’s no peace there. So ask God to help you clean out the sin in your life. Say no to the world’s way and begin to live God’s way. Draw near to him. If you do, you can experience God’s grace. You can experience his healing.
That’s the first thing – draw near to God.
2. Discover GOD’S PLAN for your life
Of course we have hesitation when it comes to following somebody else’s plan for our life. But we shouldn’t feel that way with God because God has good plans for us.
Jeremiah 29, “’I know what I have planned for you,’ says the Lord. I have good plans for you. I don’t plan to hurt you. I plan to give you hope and a good future.”
This is the creator of life himself. He says, “I know what it takes to live a good life. I have a plan for living for you that involves joy, abundance that you can’t find anywhere else. That’s the kind of plan I have for you.” And the rewards of following God’s plan are so much greater than any other plan. They’re so much more valuable to your life than anything else be it money, popularity, cool stuff. But what do you think God’s plan for your life is when it comes to your family? Respect. That’s part of God’s plan for you in your family role; that you would come with respect. And obey. When your parents tell you to do something, you obey them – you come to them, you respect them, you obey them. That’s part of God’s plan for you in your life.
And you need to deal with your sin personally. God does not expect you to control sin in the world. He doesn’t expect you to control sin in your home that’s not yours. But He does expect you to deal with your own sin and tap into His strength so that you can change. Changing ourselves all alone is too much for us. We need God’s strength to make that change. That’s also part of God’s plan for your life. The first step is draw near to God. The second is we discover God’s plan for your life.
3. DON’T give up
My challenge to you is don’t give up. I think the reason why we give up so easy is because of all the television we watch. You watch a TV program and there’s a problem and 30 minutes it’s all gone and everybody’s happy. Every show is the same. It’s a half-hour show. A little problem, some cheesy humor, ten commercials, and the solution and everybody’s fine. That’s it. It would be wonderful if life was like that. But life is not like that. When you take a look at the problems in your family I know that you’re going to say, “There’s no way I can see an end.” That’s why my challenge to is you don’t give up. Hang in there. Persevere. Keep on doing these things. Keep approaching your family with respect and obedience. Keep looking to God for help and comfort. It will pay off.
There’s a story I read about a swimmer. She was trying to set a world’s record by being the first swimmer to swim from Catalina to Long Beach – about 26 miles. She trained for it for so long and she was ready to go. Finally she started swimming one morning. She had two boats with her. The boats are on either side of her, towing a shark cage. She’s swimming right in the middle of a shark cage. There are great white sharks between here and Catalina. She’s swimming along and hours go by. A couple of sharks hit the cage so she starts to get fearful. Then she starts getting cold. And it’s really foggy. The fog is so thick she can’t see ahead even a few feet in front of the boat. So finally, after hours of this she says, “I’m done. I’m not going to make it. I give up. Pull me in the boat.” The people on the boat looked at her and said, “Don’t give up now. You are so close to the shore. It’s just right there. Don’t give up.” She said, “Forget it. Pull me in the boat.” So they pulled her in the boat and as she stood in the prow of the boat the fog lifted a little bit and she saw less than 100 feet away, the shore. She was so close to making it through for the world record. She didn’t get it and she never got it, because she gave up.
Here’s my challenge to you. Don’t give up. Hang in there. I know that in your family right now, spiritually, you may be cold and tired and scared. Don’t give up. You may be surrounded by fog and you can’t see the way ahead. You can’t possibly imagine that your family life is going to get any better. Don’t give up. God wants to give you strength. He wants to give you the ability to persevere.
We prayed for you guys again today as a staff… and here is what we prayed:
Ephesians 3, “I ask the Father and his great glory to give you the power to be strong in spirit, give you that strength through his spirit. I pray that you can understand how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is. Christ’s love is greater than any person can ever know.”
As we have been talking about families for the last three weeks some of you are dealing with incredibly huge family situations… divorce, abuse, mental illness, physical illness, and some of you are even dealing with death issues. It’s huge and it’s this huge burden of pain in your life. Don’t give up. This is so important. If you are dealing with situations that are big, no matter what your pain is, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one that is going through this type of situation. You’re not alone. Give your burden of pain and your worries to God. Let Him comfort you as you trust Him.
There is help available for what you’re going through. Just let somebody know. God does not expect you to suffer in silence. That’s not God’s plan. It never has been. God wants you to seek the help that’s available. All you have to do is tell somebody. Sometimes God puts people in our lives for the purpose of helping us. You can tell your small group leader or pull one of the adults aside and talk to us tonight. Email us, give us a call, FB us this week. You don’t need to suffer alone. You have God and you have people around you that God has put in your life who can help you.
No matter what your pain is:
1. You’re not alone
2. There’s help available.
Just tell somebody.
Maybe you’re here and there’s no big issue in your life. Sometimes family conflicts arise but there’s no huge issue. But I still challenge you to do these things – draw near to God, discover his plan for your family life and commit to never, ever giving up. God’s plan for your family is a good plan. It’s a plan that will bless your life now and bless your life in the future because it shapes part of who you are and that will impact your own family you have one day.
