A final component of God’s healing work to consider is that so much of it happens through the community of faith. Through prayer, service, and tangible support, God works in and through us to bring healing to others’ minds, bodies, and spirits. This is a part of what it means to be Christ’s representatives in a broken world!

In this message we will explore our responsibility to use our gifts, our presence, and our resources to help bring healing to others as representatives of Christ. We’ll be reminded of the importance of listening and having compassion for the healing others desire instead of coming in with all the answers and healing what we think is broken (e.g. My Body is Not a Prayer Request). Finally, we will remember the importance of trusting our community to journey through pain together and not try to weather these challenging storms alone.

We have established that our God is in the business of healing pain. We have also begun to grasp the shocking truth that he experiences that pain alongside us. But this still raises an important question. The Bible is full of declarative promises that God’s healing for us is assured (Psalm 91 is a perfect example). What do we do when the healing of God doesn’t happen when we feel we need it most?

In this message we will wrestle with what to do when we don’t find healing from God when and how we want it. We’ll enter into the mystery of a God whose ways are beyond our own and consider the (sometimes frustrating) idea that God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we want him to. What does it mean to trust in God’s promises while being patient in the waiting?

As we continue to explore the meaning of pain in our world and the actions God is taking to heal it, we must wrestle with the most provocative idea of all: that God sent his own Son to not only heal our pain, but to bear our pain with us. How does it change our understanding of our own pain to know that Christ is “a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (Isaiah 53:3)? How might we experience our pain of mind, body, and spirit knowing that our savior is, in many ways, there with us right in the middle of it? Even more challenging: as Christ’s representatives in the world, what does it look like for us to willingly share in the pain of others like Jesus?

For the first message of Hope Month, we will consider two fundamental propositions about our world. First, we’ll discuss the universality of pain and the many forms it takes (body, mind, and spirit), from the grief we experience at the loss of a loved one, to the anxiety and depression so often clouding our minds, to the chronic illness and pain which besets our bodies.

Second, we will explore the character of our God as one in the business of healing that pain (a.k.a. Jehova rapha – “the God who heals,” Exodus 15:26). In Psalm 147 the psalmist depicts God as being actively involved in healing our pain: rebuilding broken cities, bringing exiles home, healing the brokenhearted, bandaging wounds, supporting the humble, and blessing children. Luke 6:17-19 describes Jesus doing very much the same thing (“He healed everyone”). What might it look like for us to put our trust in a God who heals? And how might we join him in that healing work in the lives of others?

What happens when we fail? With such a high call to biblical morality in our minds, this question is inevitable. None of us are perfect and we are all going to continue sinning even as we try to live in a new way. In this message, we will explore the concept of God’s grace for us and consider what it looks like to accept his forgiveness daily. We will see how we are called not just to avoid acting like the person we used to be, but to become the image-bearing child of God we already are. With God’s grace as our foundation, the grand vision of biblical morality becomes less of an audacious impossibility and more of a journey on which we can all make progress, no matter where we are at the moment.

All we have to do is read the Bible and do what it says, right? Well, it may not be quite so simple. For one thing, the Bible is full of “rules” which, for one reason or another, we no longer consider binding. Some biblical rules are emphasized differently (or ignored entirely!) in different parts of the Church. And it’s obvious that the application of some biblical rules has changed significantly in the Church over time. How are we to make sense of the moral vision of the Bible with so many complicated factors to consider? In this message, we will explore the grand storyline of Scripture and see how God’s Spirit weaves core moral principles throughout the text which call us to a way of living far deeper than simple rules. A way of living which, if we trust God enough to try it, can lead to his image being restored in each of us and to the very healing of our world.

At the core of all biblical morality is a posture which can and should define our lives. First, we love God with everything we have. Second, we love others as we love ourselves. As familiar as this sentiment is to those who grew up in the Church, the implications of this core posture remain staggering if we think about them deeply enough. Choosing to live each day completely surrendered to God’s desires for our lives while simultaneously choosing to demonstrate self-giving love towards others? This is no easy task. And yet this is the invitation from God’s Spirit which can transform us into the likeness of Christ if we let it.

What is sin? This may sound like an easy question to answer, but in truth we have a lot of baggage to unload to grasp its real biblical definition. In this message we will explore the grand narrative of Scripture and see how humans, created in the image of God, have had that image disfigured through our self-serving rebellion against God’s intentions (a.k.a. “sin”). We will also begin to understand how Christ restores the image of God in us through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can begin to live out the core biblical moral principles in the midst of a still broken world.

In the final week of the series, we will explore Jesus’ conclusion to this provocative section of teaching. Here he provides two metaphors to capture the idea that the fruit of our lives (e.g. loving our enemies) only comes about if we have our roots or foundations in the right place. It is fitting for us to conclude by considering whether our words and actions are flowing out of our surrender to Christ or in our own self-interest and desire. The storms of cultural rage are swirling around us. Will the faith we’ve built withstand it? If we dedicate our lives to being transformed by Christ’s Spirit, building our lives on his self-giving love, perhaps the idea of loving our enemies in this divided time won’t seem so crazy after all…

As we continue in the passage, Jesus begins to get practical about what this others-focused love looks like by turning the mirror back towards ourselves. If we want to love our enemies with non-judgmental compassion like the Father, we must first recognize our own shortcomings and brokenness and how deeply we have been transformed by his grace. The humility that comes from an acknowledgment of our own hypocrisy and sin is the key to offering grace towards others who do not measure up either, especially when those ‘others’ are ones the world says we should hate.