The scariest monsters are those that come from within!

JR. Forasteros - March 8, 2015

Images and Idols

Can You Hear Me Now?

When someone challenges our identity, we get angry. But maybe the problem is that we’ve built our identities on the wrong things. Israel made the same mistake – they had allowed the Law and the Temple to define who they were, and injustice flourished. Jesus’ temple cleansing and the 10 commandments help us to identify the idols in our lives so that we can confess our sin and ground our identities in God. We can be free to engage others with generosity and love when we’re not busy protecting our sense of self.

From Series: "Can You Hear Me Now?"

Throughout history, God has made covenants with humanity. These covenants are promises to be faithful, to trust, to live together in peace. And over and over, humanity has broken those covenants. But now that God has come in Jesus, he is restoring broken covenants, healing broken relationships, reestablishing peace between God and humanity. This Lent, we look to Jesus to transform us and make us whole.

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Today’s about Ghost stories. Though they appear in many forms, the quintessential ghost story involves the spirit of a dead person who’s stayed around (usually a haunted house) because they have unfinished business. Maybe they have to deliver a message or ensure proper burial or get revenge. Whatever the case, once their business is complete, they leave into the afterlife.

Unlike our previous two monsters, today we’re not ghosts. Rather, to quote Peter Rollins,

We are the haunted houses. — Peter Rollins

We move through life collecting hurts, wounds and scars, evidence of pain inflicted on us by other people. Some may be slight, exaggerated in our heads – maybe someone who cuts us off or says something cruel or who causes us harm by accident. Others could be huge, life-altering. A spouse who left. An abuser. And there’s a whole range of hurts between.

Whatever their source, however legitimate or not, these people, these hurts don’t just exit our lives.

We carry them around with us, in our heads and in our souls. They haunt us, returning again and again out of the ether to drag us through the past, to relive history, to reopen old wounds.

The problem is we don’t know what these ghosts want. We don’t know how to resolve their business and get them to leave us. We can’t escape their haunting – especially if the person who hurt you is still a part of your life.

If we want to escape our ghosts, if we want to be free from the haunting of our hurts, we must learn the difficult art of forgiveness.

Join us Sunday as we learn how to forgive and find healing.

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