Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 9 September 2014 "Using grace-giving words to ourselves"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 9 September 2014 "Using grace-giving words to ourselves"
Daily Scripture:  1 John 3:14-15 The way we know we’ve been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn’t love is as good as dead. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know very well that eternal life and murder don’t go together.
16-17 This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.
When We Practice Real Love
18-20 My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
21-24 And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.
Reflection Questions:
John began this passage by echoing what Jesus taught: that feelings and words of hatred toward others are a form of murder (cf. Matthew 5:21-22). Jesus didn’t seek to kill his foes—he laid down his life for them. But then John extended the principle to the words so many of us speak against ourselves (“even if our hearts condemn us”). Those words, too, can kill our spirit, and there, too, God’s mercy is the answer (“God is greater than our hearts”).
What are the kinds of mistakes or habits that most often trigger self-criticism in you? When you are speaking negative, critical words about yourself, do you find them to be “useful for building up”? Do they “give grace” to you as you listen to your own critical thoughts or words? What better ways have you found to correct and build yourself up than being harshly self-critical?
Pastors or counselors fairly often hear a person say, “God may forgive me for that, but I can never forgive myself.” Christian counselor Bruce Narramore, in his book No Condemnation, noted that if we say that, we seem to think we have higher standards for ourselves than God does! How can you more fully internalize the reality that “God is greater than our hearts,” that you can trust God’s forgiveness more than your own self-condemning feelings?
Today's Prayer:
Loving God, help not only the words I speak to others, but also the words I speak internally to myself, to be acceptable to you, and in harmony with your gracious words. Amen.
Insight from Rev. Glen Shoup
Rev. Glen Shoup is the Executive Pastor of Worship and a Congregational Care Pastor.
Authentic sorrow and repentance are important.  It’s too easy sometimes to simply confess our wrongs and sins and go no deeper. But real healing, the kind of healing that can only come from truly accepting and receiving forgiveness for our wrongs and sins, can’t happen if we merely acknowledge and confess and go no deeper. Confession is simply to name and tell the truth about failures. And frankly, too many of us, get stuck in cycles of spiritual and emotional wallowing and self-justification because all we’ve been willing to do is acknowledge and name the truth that we were wrong followed pretty quickly by self-appeasement like…but after all, isn’t everybody wrong at times…I’m not really that bad…others have done worse—these are the kinds stuck rhythms we find ourselves in when we go no deeper than confession.
All of us know what that’s about and, in fact, all of us have been there at one point or another—which is why—authentic sorrow and repentance is important.  Only when we are authentically sorry and repent (repent literally means to turn away from) are we able to come to place of letting go of all self-justification and rationalization.  Only when we are authentically sorry and repent are we willing to come to the place of recognizing that it doesn’t matter what others have done that might have been worse or how much company we might have in our sins and failures because the primary issue isn’t everybody else—it’s us.  We are the one who has failed and chosen wrong and the fact that we may not have been the only one is utterly immaterial.  Authentically being sorry and repenting in addition to confessing is what brings us to the essential place of healing.
However, once we truly embrace authentic sorrow and repentance of our wrongs and sins, there is an important next step for all of us if we are to daily experience the healing and salvation that God has for each of us.  And that important next step is touched upon in our reading today—and it too—is an imperative word for us, particularly as it relates to us playing the old tapes that Pastor Adam referenced in last weekend’s sermon.
I John 3:20 says even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.
You see, just like we can’t ever get where we need to go by way of healing and wholeness if all we ever do is hover on the surface of our brokenness with mere confession; we also can’t ever get where we need to go if all we ever do is remain perpetually submarined in the sorrow and heaviness of our own brokenness!  Once we’ve gone deeper than confession to the place of authentic sorrow and repentance, we have to then recognize that our decisions (naming…being sorry…turning away from) are decisions that are embracing and receiving God’s forgiveness and redemption.  Our decisions are decisions that are saying “Yes” to God.  And God always forgives, God always redeems and God always makes new for God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him and those whom the Son sets free, are free indeed (John 3:17 & 8:36).
So today remember—when it comes to the words you say to yourself about yourself; when it comes to lies those old tapes want to tell you that you’re not only not really forgiven, you’re not worth forgiving—The Word of God says something completely different:  He says that he has come into this world for the very reason of saving you from those lies and because he has set you free, you are free indeed!
So…even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.
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