How to Be a Healing Witness and Why It Matters

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In this broken world, bad stuff often happens to us in isolation, just us and the perpetrator. No one knows our secret.

We were designed by God to heal in community. Not a big, giant community. I’m not talking about telling our hurtful secrets to the whole world or publicly in front of our whole church. Yes, God calls some people to do that, and God uses those stories. But, personally, I don’t believe God calls most people to do that.

I think that’s because, too often, many people in the general congregation don’t have a grid for your story. They aren’t safe people to share your story with. They don’t know how to steward it well. And the tender parts of your heart revealed in your story deserve to be stewarded well.

So not everyone needs to know everything. But someone needs to know everything. In a small, safe community of other believers, even if it’s just one other person, there is real healing power in having our story received.

As the Church of God, Jesus’ hands, feet, mouth, and heart to a desperate and dying world, it’s important for us to learn how to receive people’s stories and how to steward them well, honoring the tender parts of their heart that was so wounded.

One of the most powerfully healing things we can do to receive and steward their story and heart well is to be a witness to the truth of their story. This does 2 incredibly powerful healing things for them:

1) A Witness to the Painful Truth of Their Story

Although, yes, there’s plenty of deception going around our world right now, so often that’s not the problem. Often, the problem isn’t deception, it’s truth misapplied. Truth, even Biblical truth, applied in the wrong way in the wrong context becomes toxic.

  • “Get over it.”
  • “Big boys don’t cry.”
  • “Suck it up.”
  • “Be a man.”
  • “Grow up.”

Yes, Ecclesiastes 3, there is a time to delay tears in order to accomplish what needs to be done in the moment. But, Ecclesiastes 3, there is also a season to let the tears flow.

Having someone else witness to the pain of our story is amazingly healing.

  • “That must have really hurt.”
  • “It wasn’t fair you had to go through that.”
  • “You are not being treated right by your ex.”
  • “She should not have said that. That must really hurt to hear. It isn’t true.”

Just that. Just having someone acknowledge the pain of what you’re going through is tremendously healing.

Now please don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a pity party. This isn’t a celebration of victimhood. This isn’t trying to “fix it” for someone.

This is healthy, godly, loving community saying, “I see you. I see the pain you have to walk through. But you don’t have to walk alone. I’ll walk with you.”

It’s about holding space, safe space, for the other person to be vulnerable. To let their guard down. To share their story. To be heard.

And this is so healing because, when the pain happened, they weren’t heard.

2) A Witness that What They Experienced Was Wrong

To hear someone else say what you experienced was wrong is tremendously freeing and healing.

Abuse is never, ever, the victim’s fault. No one, ever, deserves to be physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually manipulated or abused. Never.

Just to hear someone say, “It was wrong that you were treated that way,” can be tremendously healing.

  • “It was wrong that your voice was shut down.”
  • “It was wrong that you grew up without a dad.”
  • “It was wrong that they made fun of you.”
  • “It was wrong that they/he/she hurt you like that.”

Listening to someone’s story, we often don’t think to say this because it’s so obvious. We’re busy thinking about the advice we’re going to give them after they’re done telling their story. But they don’t need our “fix.” They need our witness.

Have you ever known someone who keeps telling the same story, and, even after a long time, seems to be stuck there? Why can’t they just get over it?  Because they’re looking for a witness. They desperately need to hear someone else say that what they experienced was wrong.

Of course it was wrong; it’s so obvious it goes without saying.  No, it doesn’t. It needs to be said because it needs to be heard. By them. By their ears. By their heart. Saying it out loud, letting their ears physically hear you say it, speaks directly to their heart. That’s what they need. We can learn to supply that. Such a simple thing, but it’s so rare and so powerfully healing.

Your Turn

So what about you? Does this resonate? Are you longing for a healing witness? Have you received one, and how did it help? Have you done this for someone else? Feel free to tell us your story in the comments, if you feel so lead, no pressure. And please share this post on social media if it would bless others.

3 Ways Healthy Churches Do Life Together

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In this fallen world, the human condition is a paradox of two contradictory, deep primal pulls. One is longing to be fully known, and to know others, in relationally intimacy. The other is being terrified of it. We are terrified of the intimacy we so deeply long for.

That terror usually is there because our vulnerability was violated or brutalized by those who should have loved us well but didn’t, often our family of origin.

A healthy church family loves well. Wounds given in community are healed in community. You need a healthy church family. You need relationships that go beyond “How are you? I’m fine” on Sunday morning.

That’s why we shouldn’t just “go to” a church. We should join a church. Joining signifies a deeper level of commitment to those people.

It’s not written in blood; you can always leave if it gets wonky, unhealthy, or God calls you to leave. All things are for a season, and healthy churches understand that.

But neither are you leaving at the drop of a hat, or at the first thing that offends your delicate sensibilities. You work through it. You have the uncomfortable conversations. You try to work it out.

There is a balance between running from any church that has the audacity to challenge you to grow versus staying at an unhealthy, narcissistic church and just keeping your head-down. We don’t want to get trapped in either of these extremes.

Here are 3 ways that healthy churches love well and do life together.

1) An Abundance Mindset

People who love well are givers. They don’t keep score. They don’t say, “Well, you owe me now, because I helped you.” Their love, help, and acceptance does not come with strings attached.

People committed to doing life together lift each other up, not tear each other down. They have an abundance mindset. No one is afraid of your success, and they even celebrate it. They understand a rising tide raises all boats.

A rising tide raises all boats.

Unhealthy churches have a scarcity mindset. Those people think there’s only so much success, or favor with God, to go around. So if you’re successful, that means less success for them. So they are actually afraid of your success. If you get too successful, or your life reflects too much of God’s favor, they’ll cut you back down to size. There are no giants allowed in a kingdom of dwarves.

You can see this play out in the leadership. Are the leaders in competition with each other? Are they guarded around each other? Or do they protect and affirm each other? Can they be safely vulnerable around each other?

2) Support Not Accountability

Megan Hyatt-Miller (Michael Hyatt’s daughter) tells the story of getting up early to jog with a friend before going to high-school. It was something they mutually decided to do together. On the second day, Megan had to sneak into her friend’s bedroom and wake her up at 5:00 AM to go jogging. You can imagine how long this lasted.

Megan learned it was unhealthy to “hold her friend accountable” to go jogging, when her friend obviously did not really want to. If her friend really wanted to go jogging and got herself up at 5:00 AM, Megan would support her and go jogging with her.

Obviously, I’m not talking about celebrating, supporting or winking at sin or sinful lifestyles. But using accountability and shame to control people’s behavior is sinful also. Such churches eventually just fall into sin management.

You want to do life with people who will support you accomplishing your goals, not try to guilt you into accomplishing theirs.

3) Reminding You of Your Identity, Not Your Shame

You want a church that supports your healing journey, and doesn’t guilt you for admitting your struggles.

There’s a village in Africa where, when a woman is pregnant, she goes into the forest with her friends until they get “the song of the child.” Then they go back and teach it to the village.

The village sings the person’s song at significant events in the person’s life, like their birth, their death, when they kill the leopard, get promoted in the tribe, etc.

But they also sing the song when the person messes up, often in adolescence. This is the village’s discipline. They put the person in the center of the tribe and gather around them, and say, “You’re not acting like yourself. Let us remind you of who you are.” Then the village sings them their song.

That’s a beautiful picture of how the church is supposed to support our true, God-given identity, by reminding us who we are and of how Heaven sees us. That’s a far cry from the common but unhealthy practice of holding someone accountable by holding them hostage through shame.

When you do life together, everyone is allowed to be in process. None of us have arrived. Everyone’s contribution is still valued. Everyone’s calling, both inside and outside the church, is still valued. No one is flippantly disqualified because of what they are going through.

In Summary

Healthy churches are not made up of cookie-cutter people. They don’t try to force you into a mold. They aren’t afraid of people’s differences. They don’t try to force you to be like them. They celebrate you. Those are the people you can do life with.

You’re looking for a group of people in the church that embody the qualities I’ve listed above. You’re looking for a group of safe, godly people you can do life with.

It is our passion (Janet and I) that this site is a safe, godly community, built around encouraging each other to be who God created us to be. So we hope we can be a part of your safe community and share your journey. But you also need people you can do life with face-to-face.

Your Turn

Have you found a safe group of people you can do life with? Or not? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if you think it would bless others.

4 Key Signs of a Healthy Church

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I’ve been asked recently how to find a healthy church. What does that even look like? Are there any? Does such a thing even exist?

Well, I’m happy to report, having found one ourselves and having seen many, yes, they do exist. I’ve also been in unhealthy churches for years, and there are many of those as well. So how do you tell the difference? What do you look for?

2 Caveats: The Problem with the Question

Two caveats before we dive into the 4 key signs of a healthy church.

The problem with the question is that it makes it sound binary. It makes it sound like every church’s “Healthy” checkbox is either checked or unchecked. But it doesn’t work that way.

Churches are on a journey of sanctification just like the people within them are. Healthier churches embrace that journey; less healthy churches think they’ve arrived.

The second caveat is that not every church is for every person. That’s true even of very healthy churches. And that is a very offensive concept to our American “one size fits all” mentality.

Having said all that, there are some very unhealthy churches out there, and some very healthy ones. My prayer for you is that this post helps you find the “healthy” church God is calling you to do life with.

Here are 4 key signs of a healthy church.

1) Healthy Churches Are Biblically Sound

I’m taking for granted we’re talking about solid, biblical, Bible-believing, Holy Spirit led churches. Churches that are in bed with the culture, literally, should be avoided at all costs. These are churches that support the current wave of hip, self-destructive sin that the culture is celebrating, including sex outside of marriage, abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender transition, etc. Transgender “affirming” churches are not biblically sound.

In John 8, Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you; go and leave your life of sin.” Jesus perfectly modeled loving the person while rejecting the sin.

A healthy church won’t hate anybody, but won’t wink at sin that is destroying people Jesus loves. Jesus died to set people free; how dare we wink at the sin that keeps them bound.

Healthy churches are sold out for Jesus and aren’t bullied into silence by the culture.

2) Healthy Churches Build the Kingdom, Not Their Own Empire

If you hang around a church for a while, you can tell whether the leadership is building their own empire or the Kingdom of God.

A couple years ago, a ministry in our area was having a weekend retreat. Because of somebody’s clerical error, they lost their venue for the last day, and only found out that morning. Doh!

Our pastor let them have their final service that night at our church, on very short notice. It was a completely different denomination. Our pastor did not expect to get any tangible benefit out of it whatsoever. But he has a Kingdom heart, and it showed that night.

3) Healthy Churches Have a Good Attitude when Someone Leaves

You can learn a lot about how healthy a church is by watching how people are treated when they leave.

Are people guilted into staying? Are former members now viewed as outsiders? Are people openly blessed out the front door, or are they quietly shoved out the backdoor?

A healthy church knows everyone is there for a season, and is not threatened or offended when someone leaves. They release and launch people into the next season of their lives with blessing.

4) Healthy Churches are Trauma Friendly

For those of us recovering and healing from trauma, it’s important to be in a safe place with safe people.

Safe people in a healthy church will NOT:

  • Blame you for the abuse you suffered. See “Why We Blame Trauma Survivors.”
  • Accuse you of not having faith because you’re struggling.
  • Shame you for admitting you’re struggling or having a hard time.
  • Quote scripture at you because they don’t know what else to say.
  • Pretend to have all the answers.

Safe people in a healthy church WILL:

  • Validate your pain. See “How to Validate Someone’s Pain.”
  • Support your counseling and/or medication.
  • Stand with you while you have a blue day.
  • Be there for you.
  • Listen more than they talk.

A church is not a trauma center, and pastors are not trauma counselors. So they may not completely understand. But a healthy church will support and encourage you on your healing journey, not shame you for being on it.

One Final Note…

Not everyone in a healthy church is healthy. Most churches will have people across the whole spectrum of healthiness. Find the safe people.

Hopefully at least the leadership is healthy. They can’t lead people into a greater degree of health or holiness or intimacy with Jesus than they walk in themselves. If the leadership is not safe or healthy, then definitely find another church.

You’re looking for a group of safe people in the church that embody the qualities I’ve listed above. You’re looking for a group of safe, godly people you can do life with.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Have you found a healthy church? Have you suffered abuse in an unhealthy church? Share your story with us in the comments, and please share this post if it would bless others.

5 Ways to Validate Someone’s Pain

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People come to church in silent pain, isolated and hurting. “Look at all these happy people getting close to God. I’m the only one who’s faking it.” Nothing could be further from the truth. But we drive people to internalize and hide their pain because, by and large, the church doesn’t know how to help somebody who’s hurting.

Too many of our churches are not safe places for people to admit they’re in pain, whether it’s depression, being post-abortive, struggling with self-harm or suicide, or what have you. But we have to figure this out. If you can’t go to the people of God when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

I hope this post is a positive step toward remedying this situation. Helping someone who’s hurting starts by validating their pain. Here are 5 great ways to do that.

1) Get Comfortable with Silence.

Think about it. Everything in our modern Western world is designed to protect us from one thing. Silence.

“I really need to spend some quiet, reflective time. I think I’ll get on FaceBook,” said no one ever. If we’re not careful, our lives can get driven by notifications. Someone reacted to your post! Text message! Look who added to their Instagram story!

I’m not knocking social media. They are great communication tools, and they’re fun. They have their place. But we’ve inadvertently engineered ourselves into a world with no silence.

So when we’re talking to someone who’s hurting, we don’t like an “awkward silence.” So we break it too soon. But the other person needed that silence.

Silence is healing. They are processing in the silence, and if you break it too soon, you can rob them of what God is doing in that moment. Sometimes just waiting for them to form the words speaks volumes more than anything you could’ve said.

There’s a great model for this in the book of Job. Job’s friends often get a (well-deserved) bad rap. But they actually got it right for a whole week when they showed up and just sat with him in silence, in the ashes of his life.

They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was. – Job 2:13

Then Job’s friends opened their mouths, and it was all downhill from there.

The point is, when you’re trying to comfort someone who’s hurting or grieving, don’t be the one to break the silence. Let them break it when they’re ready.

2) Acknowledge their Pain with Reflective Listening.

When someone shares their pain with you, don’t judge it, dismiss it, or minimize it. Reflect it back to them in your own words. Some examples of good things to say are:

  • “So do you feel like …?”
  • “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. That must really hurt.”
  • “Tell me more about that.”

This is not a politician’s hollow “I feel your pain” so they can manipulate a vote out of you. No, they don’t feel your pain. For the most part, they have no idea. (Aside: Never vote for anyone who says “I feel your pain” because they’re lying already.)

This is an honest attempt to truly listen and hear, not only what the person said, but how they feel. By reflecting back what you thought you heard, you communicate that you’re trying to hear their heart.

3) Don’t Say “I Understand”

One of the worst things you can say is “I understand.” The truth is, you don’t understand. You’re not them, and you haven’t been through what they’re going through. No, you really haven’t.

Even if you’ve been through something similar, you’re not them. Your backgrounds and make-up are different. Your needs are different. Your support system is different.

When we say, “I understand,” we minimize their pain. We trivialize what they’re going through. Instead, a great thing to say is, “I have no grid for what you’re going through, but I’m here for you.”

4) Don’t Share Your Story. Shut Up and Listen.

This is not time to share your similar story. They don’t need to hear your story. They need you to hear theirs. In their pain, their heart needs to speak and be heard. They need you to listen and make sure they feel heard.

They need you to hear their heart. When the other person is talking, most people aren’t really listening. They’re politely waiting to talk.

When we share our story, we take the focus off of them and put it on us. We’re telling them, “Your experience is common. I went through it. I got through it. You will too.” While that sounds great on paper and may even be true, that’s not what they need to hear right now.

They need to hear that they were heard. They need to hear that their pain is legitimate, and you’re not shaming them for it. (So often we blame trauma survivors because we’re trying to make sense of an unsafe world.)

Don’t blame them. Validate their pain. “That must really hurt,” is a great thing to say.

After you validate their pain, after they feel heard, then you earn the right to ask them if you can share your story. At the right time, your story might truly be helpful to them. But keep it short. They don’t need all the gory details. Get the focus back onto them as soon as you can.

5) Be Their Friend, Not Their Counselor

You don’t have to fix them. And, frankly, they don’t want to be fixed. They want to be healed. And the first step toward healing is being heard. If you do nothing else, communicate to them that you’ve heard their pain. Not understood it or felt it, because you don’t. But you’ve heard it.

When they believe they’ve been heard, you’ve validated their pain. You’ve validated their story. You’ve validated their worth as a person and as a child of God.

Offer to help them find good help, whether it’s pastoral or professional counseling, or whatever resources their situation requires. Always ask first, don’t impose a solution, but give them options and the freedom to choose to take them or leave them without condemnation from you. They need to drive their healing, not you, although you can respectfully suggest possible routes.

There’s nothing more rewarding than being a friend to someone in their time of need. There’s nothing more rewarding than being there, not necessarily being the person with all the right answers, but being the person who was just there when they needed us.

This is how we, as Jesus’ hands and feet, can support those in crisis who need us. This is how we can make our churches safe places for people in crisis. And we’ll be grateful for that safe place in our time of need as well.

Your Turn

What do you think? What’s your story? Please tell us your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share this post if it would bless other people.

3 Ways to Help Someone with Depression

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This could quite possibly be the most important post I’ve ever written. It could save a life. It’s based on Sarah Robinson’s excellent post here (not an affiliate link). Sarah is a personal friend in our writer’s mentoring group, and a very strong believer. Please read her article, share it, and then come back and read this post.

Before we get to the 3 ways we can help someone with depression, we need to understand a little more about it, and how we as the church often, unfortunately, miss critical opportunities to be Jesus.

Is the gospel “Try Harder!” or is it “God loves you. You matter.”?

Listen to the common responses I’ve heard Christians give to people suffering from depression:

  • “You just need to choose joy!” Translation: “Try harder!”
  • “You just need to believe and live the word!” Translation: “Try harder!”
  • “Take those dark thoughts captive to Christ! Apply 2 Corinthians 10:5 to your life.” Translation: “Try harder!”
  • “You just need to pray, read your Bible, and/or worship more!” Translation: “Try harder!”

Yes, we all have choices to make. Yes, no one is arguing against believing and living the Word. Yes, learning to take our thoughts captive to Christ is a skill we as Christians need to learn. Yes, intimacy with Jesus through prayer, Bible reading, and worship is critical.

But what if someone does all those things and more, and they’re still depressed? What if they do everything you tell them perfectly with all their heart, and yet they still feel the crushing blackness?

I think most of us would tend to say, “Well, you have to fight for it! You have to contend!” And then we’d quote them some verse about God’s faithfulness. Translation: “Try harder!” And the truth is, for most of us, we get very uncomfortable about now, because what we thought should be working isn’t working.

The sticky wicket is, those things are all true. God is faithful, and we do need to contend. But that’s not what they need to hear right now. That’s not how to be Jesus to them right now.

Before we dive into the 3 ways to be Jesus to them, we need to understand WHY all the good, solid, Biblical advice and scriptures we’re quoting at them aren’t working.

The Wrong Answer

The obvious (but incorrect) answer is, they’re not doing it right. We think if they were doing it right, these things would work. So we conclude they must not be doing it right. And we tell them to try harder in all of the Biblically accurate, kind but self-righteous ways we can muster.

At the end of the day, we’re preaching Works Righteousness. We don’t mean to, but we totally are. “If you were doing it right, it would work. Try harder!” We may not say it, but we’re thinking it. That’s works righteousness.

There’s a natural reason why we do this. We need our world to work. We need to at least pretend it’s a safe place. Say our neighbor’s child commits suicide or something really bad happens to them. We search for a reason to believe they were bad parents. Or he’s an alcoholic. Or she’s whatever. Something negative. Because if we find that negative, and we avoid it ourselves, then we can secretly believe that bad thing can’t happen to us. Our world works.

That’s works righteousness, and it’s a false hope. The truth is a lot messier and uncomfortable. The truth is, the world doesn’t work. It’s not a safe place. Bad things do happen to good people.

The Right Answer

Here’s the uber-counter-intuitive secret of why quoting the Bible verses and all the good Christian principles don’t always work. Ready? Here it is. God’s not letting them work. What?!? God’s not letting his own Word work? That makes no sense at all!

Hang with me a minute here. Let me explain. If God allowed quoting the Bible verses to work, if he allowed doing all the things to relieve the pain, we wouldn’t search for deeper healing. There’s something else God wants to do in our lives, some deeper level of healing and anointing he wants to give us.

Maybe there’s wounding so deep it happened before we had language. Often, we come out of the womb with wounding, or someone did something to us very early in life. That’s not our fault. The sin done to a child is never the child’s fault. Our responsibility is the judgments we make afterward, and the lies we believe about ourselves, about God, about others and how they will treat us, as a result of our wounding.

That early wounding can manifest in our lives in a lot of different ways; unfortunately, some of them are less socially acceptable in Christian circles than others. Depression is often not accepted in the church, and that’s an injustice we need to correct.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we ignore or sugar-coat stuff in people’s lives. But I am saying we need to accept the person without judging their pain.

There might be no wounding at all. Maybe God wants to give them a powerful anointing over depression to help others. The good news is we have authority over what we’ve been delivered from. The downside is we have to pass through the darkness to be delivered from it to get that authority.

So what’s Biblical? Inner healing? Counseling? Deliverance? Medication?

They are all just as Biblical. We tend to tell people with depression if they just had more faith they wouldn’t need that medication. But we won’t dare tell a diabetic that, and for good reason. It’s the same thing.

Medicine is not unbiblical. Penicillin was discovered completely by accident. Someone left a petri dish uncovered by an open window. It got moldy overnight, ruining the planned experiment, but there were no bacteria around the mold. That’s how Alexander Fleming, in 1928, discovered the medicine that’s saved millions of lives and changed the world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Discovery) How much do you want to bet an angel opened that petri dish and moved it by the window? The same angel probably opened the window, too! The discovery of medicine and the wisdom to use it is from God.

Yes, God often heals miraculously without medicine. And, personally, in the West, I think we turn to medicine too quickly. It should be our last resort, not our first. But there’s nothing wrong, and everything right, with taking medicine if you need it.

It’s not “either/or.” It’s “and.” Often, a person needs medication first to get leveled out enough to receive inner healing, counseling, and/or deliverance. Sometimes deliverance needs to happen first to remove spiritual blockages that are keeping the medicine from working. Sometimes inner healing goes first. They can go in any order. None are contradictory, and they are not all always needed. It just depends on what God’s doing with that person.

Yes, sometimes with depression there’s something else going on, but sometimes there’s not. Either way, Christian shaming about taking medication is not Christ-like! We need to stop it.

So How Do We Help People in Pain?

How can we be Jesus to our brothers and sisters suffering from depression?

Look at how Job’s three friends handled it, in Job 2:12-13:

When they saw him [Job] from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

Job’s three friends typically get a bad rap, but they actually got it right for a whole week! Then they opened their mouths in Chapter 4, and it was all downhill from there.

So what did they do during that first week?

  • They went to him. They didn’t let him be alone.
  • They shared his pain. They wept with him.
  • They sat with him in the middle of it, in the wreckage of his life.

We need to get comfortable around each other’s pain.

People don’t share their pain with us because we judge it. Too often, we’re quick to whip out Bible verses or some Biblical principle because we’re honestly trying to be helpful. We don’t realize it, but we’re actually trying to fix them, and it’s not helpful. People want to be healed, not fixed.

We have not been taught how to be around hurting or grieving people. We don’t know how to process someone else’s grief. We’ve been taught, falsely, that real Christians don’t hurt or grieve. But Jesus said just the opposite (see Matthew 5:11, John 16:33, et al.)

So we tell them, “This too shall pass. It’s only a season.” And while that’s true, that’s not helpful to them. Because they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s around a corner. All they see is the blackness. Instead of trying to fix them, we need to love them through it. Love, with no expectations, is healing.

3 Ways to be Jesus to Someone with Depression

1) Honor them by letting them be hurting. It’s ok for someone to be hurting. Let them grieve. We don’t have to be afraid of their pain or try to fix them.

2) Tell them they matter. To us. To God. That he loves them. That we love them. That we will walk through the dark with them. They are not alone.

3) Do something kind. Ask the Holy Spirit what you can do to show them they matter, that these aren’t just words. What can you give them? Maybe it’s time—just having coffee, or a phone call. Maybe it’s a gift, something they would enjoy, or just a card. The Holy Spirit knows. Ask him until he tells you.

That’s being Jesus. That’s living the Word. We let people grieve, we let them be hurting. But we don’t let them do it alone. We get in the ashes of the wreckage of their life with them, and just sit there. Yes, there’s a time to speak into someone’s life, but there’s also a time to be silent and earn that privilege (Ecclesiastes 3:7b). By just being there. By just loving them.

How about you?

Have well-meaning Christians been complete idiots? Or who was that special person who made all the difference? Tell us your story in the comments. And if you are suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. God really does love you. You matter.

Please share on social media if you think this would help someone else.

How to Be a Resident in Christianity, Not a Realtor

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Do we present Jesus and the “house” of Christianity to people as realtors, or as residents? (DISCLAIMER: I am in no way dissing realtors. I know a lot of great realtors who negotiate win-wins for both the buyers and the sellers. Most realtors are very ethical, and I am in no way disparaging them or their profession. We need them, and a good one is worth their weight in gold.) But there’s a spiritual principle here I challenge you to think about.

The realtor knows the features of the house. The realtor knows the selling points. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the realtor, even a buyer-broker, does not work for either the buyer or the seller. They work for the sale. Nothing wrong with that; that’s their job. They are trying to make the sale; that’s when they get paid.

But the resident knows what it’s like to live in the house, the pros and the cons. They know, based on the sun and the season, what’s the best time on the porch. They know if the house is drafty or not. They know which toilet handle sticks and how many times to wiggle it. They know where all the bodies are buried. They know the skeletons in the closet.

Typically, the realtor won’t say anything about the house to interfere with the sale. But the resident can tell you what it’s really like to live there.

How do we present Christianity to non-believers? Like a realtor trying to make a sale? Or like a resident who knows what’s really required to live there?

Do we present Jesus like a happy pill? Here, just pop a couple Bible verses each morning and life will be happy all the time! Have we reduced the Gospel to cold medicine?

Or do we present Jesus as a Lord we devote our life to? Following Jesus costs us everything, but it’s worth it. This isn’t to get all legalistic and performance-oriented.

But seriously, do we hide the “down-sides” to manipulate the sale? Are we afraid of their negative decision? When it’s someone we love, we’re trying to save them from the eternal consequences of a negative decision, so, yeah, it’s easy to get scared. It’s easy to slip into sales mode to manipulate the sale instead of honoring their right to choose.

“Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” – from the movie Princess Bride

How did Jesus present himself?

On the one hand, Jesus said:

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” – Luke 9:23

“Denying yourself” is hardly a selling point in today’s hedonistic culture.

But, on the other hand, Jesus also said:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

I think there’s a balance here, and we need to present the truth of both sides, the complete picture. Jesus is both Savior and Lord. You can’t have one without the other.

So how do we do this? How do we present Jesus and Christianity as a resident making an invitation versus a realtor trying to make a sale? Here are 3 ways.

1) Live in the House

The big difference between a resident and a realtor is that the resident lives there. Another word for “lives there” is “abide.” John 15 is all about how to abide with Jesus. Here’s a small excerpt, but I encourage you to go and read the whole chapter.

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now abide in my love. If you keep my commands, you abide in my love, just I have kept my Father’s commands and abide in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” – John 15:9-11

Do you see both the “Savior” and “Lord” pieces? “Savior” in that our joy is complete. And “Lord” in that we keep his commands. Doing life with Jesus, abiding with him, means both (1) keeping his commands out of love for him, not fear or compulsion, and (2) experiencing his internal joy regardless of external circumstances.

You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have “Savior” without “Lord.” If we’re going to present Christianity as a resident, we need to live in the house.

2) Embrace the Suffering

In the next chapter, John 16, Jesus gives a promise we don’t talk about too much, but we should.

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33b

When you’re a home-owner, you have to embrace the good with the bad. Jesus has warned us, even promised us, that this world will be trouble-filled for us. So let’s not present the Gospel like a happy pill. Often, suffering increases when someone comes to Christ. The sick people in our life don’t like it when we get healthy.

Our own sinful behaviors are like banging our head on a brick wall. We need to be willing to stop, instead of just trying to find a football helmet with more padding.

As the church, we need to speak up about the culture’s self-destructive behaviors that destroy those who practice them; for example, sex outside marriage, abortion, transgenderism, etc.

The church has been bullied into silence for far too long.

3) Use the House Keys

Not even the realtor has keys to the house. They have to get a key out of the lockbox. But the resident owns the keys.

God knows the end from the beginning. So fortunately for us, he’s already told us, in advance, the keys that work. Here are the two keys:

They [Christians in the end-times] triumphed over him [the enemy] by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. – Revelation 12:11

This is how to present Jesus. There are two parts and we need to use both.

  1. The word of our testimony, what Jesus has done for us in our lives. They can argue with our beliefs but they can’t argue with our experience.
  2. The authority of Jesus’ blood to bring healing into people’s lives and circumstances, physical or emotional, both are miraculous. This can look like performing a miracle, declaring victory in impossible circumstances, or just telling someone how the Holy Spirit sees them. His power confirms our experience.

Your Turn

Does this post resonate? Tell us what you think in the comments. Did you get sold Christianity by a realtor or a resident? Were there rude awakenings? Has it been harder than you were originally told? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

The Most Damaging Thing We Do to Each Other without Realizing It

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People are people.

We get saved, and we’re instantly justified before God by the blood of Jesus. But we’re not instantly sanctified. We bring all our godless behavior with us into the church.

Being justified means being forgiven. Cleansed of our sin. No longer cannon-fodder for Hell. We were saved from hellfire and brought back into relationship with our loving God when we gave our lives to Jesus. Check.

But being sanctified means being like Jesus. Living like Jesus. Loving like Jesus. Seeing other people like Jesus does. We all have a long way to go. Being sanctified means agreeing more and more with God, and from that place of intimacy, we learn who we really are and start acting like it.

One of the most insidious ungodly behaviors we bring with us into the church is fear of the unknown. We try to control what we don’t understand. It’s natural and human. It’s also wrong, and it does a lot of damage, both outside and inside the church. 

Often, that fear comes out as this really spiritually immature Thing that we condemn in our children when we see it on the playground. In fact, much of our effort in guiding our school age children revolves around teaching them how to avoid this Thing. But we use this Thing on each other in church all the time. Here are some examples. See if you can guess what this Thing is.

Can You Guess This Thing?

Example 1: Someone else is expressing their Christianity differently in a way we don’t understand.So we punish them. Nasty glares. Avoidance. Gossip. Judgmental thoughts that sneak out on our faces.

In one church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they lift their hands during worship!” In another church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they not lift their hands during worship!” 

(Aside: And to both the Holy Spirit says, “How dare you look at the other person during worship instead of Jesus!”)

Example 2: A young mother, just saved, admits to her women’s Bible study group that she’s having a tough time. She admits to having an abortion years ago, and since getting saved, is grieving for her lost child. The older women scowl at her and say, “Don’t you know that everything in your past is under the Blood? If you’re not full of the joy of the Lord, are you even saved?” 

(Aside: There’s a mile of difference between being forgiven and being healed. If you’re post-abortive and grieving, that’s a sign this is your season of healing. Here are some resources that provide post-abortive healing: Rachel’s Vineyard and Project Rachel. Or call your local Pregnancy Help Center.) 

Example 3: A pastor works up the emotion during worship. “Come on, church! Let’s worship Jesus, he’s worthy! Sing louder! Sing with me!”

(Aside: Yes, he is worthy, but you can’t force or manipulate worship out of people. You can force & manipulate singing and dancing and carrying on, but worship has to be given freely or it’s not worship.)   

Christian Peer Pressure

So what do all these examples have in common? What is this Thing? Christian peer pressure. Yikes! That’s a thing? Unfortunately, yes, and it’s all too common. We’ve all experienced it, and, if we’re being honest, we’ve all done it.

We try to force other people to stay within the experience we’re comfortable with. C’mon, be a good Christian, stay in my mold for you! Conform!

When I was growing up in the late 60’s and 70’s, “cool” was the big word. Everybody wanted to be cool. The adults didn’t know what it meant. I remember hearing adults saying, “Why do you want to be ‘cool?’ It doesn’t mean anything!” While they were right to exhort us to not be influenced by that, it totally means something. It means “acceptable.”

And that’s the thing with Christian peer pressure. You’re only acceptable if you fit into the mold. Be comfortable in there, and don’t be peeking out over the edge!

To be sure, there are some non-negotiables in Christianity: 

  • Jesus is the name above every name and the only path to God. 
  • In fact, Jesus is God. 
  • He’s the God who loved us enough to become human and die for us when we hated him. Jesus was the only person ever who was born to die. All to demonstrate his love for us. What kind of over-the-top, crazy, passionate, love does that? Crazy stuff.
  • And there are a few others I won’t go into here for lack of space. But you know them. Sexual integrity. Giving. Respect. Fruit of the Spirit. Etc.

But here’s the deal. God totally is anti-peer pressure. God doesn’t force us or manipulate us into his way of living. He gives us a choice. In fact, he’s so into this that there’s a whole book of the Bible — Deuteronomy — dedicated to nothing but God articulating our choice so we can make an informed decision. 

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” 

Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a

It’s the same choice today as he gave the children of Israel as they were about to come into the Promised Land. But it’s our choice. If we don’t choose God’s ways, it breaks his heart and he weeps for us, for the pain we’re bringing on ourselves. But God honors our choice by giving us over to the consequences of it. 

The difference between godly exhortation and fleshly peer pressure is honoring the person’s choice.

Sometimes churches mistakenly get into the business of sin management instead of transformation. And often the chief tool of sin management is Christian peer pressure. Conform. Be like us. Be acceptable. 

Now I’m not saying we need to pretend to agree with people’s bad choices. The world is trying to bully us into doing just that — calling us “haters” if we have the audacity to say someone’s sinful choices aren’t healthy. That’s worldly peer pressure, and whole denominations have succumbed to it.

But there’s peer pressure in the church too, and we need to stop it. God is not calling every man in the church to go to the men’s ministry breakfast, although he probably is calling most. He’s not calling everyone to feed the homeless every Saturday morning. 

Your Calling

But God is calling everyone to do something. If you’re just drifting through life with no real purpose, just killing time till retirement so you can play with your toys, you’re missing your calling. 

Sometimes we truly don’t know our calling and have to really pursue the Lord to find it. Sometimes it finds us while we’re pursuing something else. But often, we know our calling. We’re just afraid to chase it. We’ve found something we’re good at that’s comfortable and safe.  

What makes your heart leap but you’re terrified to pursue? Or to ask it another way: What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

The best way to stand up against and defeat Christian peer pressure is to know your calling. Then, when pressured to do whatever, you can honestly say, “I’m glad you’re doing that; that’s really great, thanks for inviting me. But I’m called to do this.”

We’re learning to say “no” to good things we aren’t called to so we can focus on the good things we are called to. So can you. You don’t have to be controlled or guilted by someone else’s mold. You don’t have to be a prisoner to anyone else’s peer pressure, Christian or otherwise. Actually, that’s a choice we make to duck our own calling. Doh! No more. Your calling is too important to get run over by somebody else’s mold.

How About You?

Have you experienced Christian peer pressure? What happened? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

3 Conversations We as the Church Need to Have

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Church is the place where we come together as a people and celebrate all that God has done for us. Yes, we celebrate our salvation, but the cross was meant to be the beginning of our freedom. God has done miraculous things in all of our lives and continues to do so. Janet and I have received tremendous healing from the Lord, and we know many others who have as well. I bet you have, too. It makes sense to find a lot of happy, joyful people in church. As it should be.

But we shouldn’t only find happy, joyful people in church and, truth be told, none of us are happy and joyful all the time. Janet and I still have significant pain in our lives, and I bet you do, too.

Yes, our joy is rooted in who Jesus is, so it’s deeper than our circumstances. Yes, he imparts supernatural joy in the middle of horrendous circumstances. I’ve experienced his peace in the midst of tremendous pain, in circumstances that should’ve been anything but peaceful. But sometimes he doesn’t bring joy. Not always; not all the time. You can’t box him in or predict what he’s going to do.

What do you do when you pray, when you worship, when you read your Bible, when you’ve done everything right, and you still feel depressed? What if you still have lustful thoughts? Even suicidal thoughts? What if you still feel the pull toward the old addiction?

We shouldn’t feel like we have to pretend we’re happy and joyful when we’re not. We all continue to go through tough stuff. Jesus promised us we’d have trouble as long as we’re in this fallen world (see John 16:33).

What happens all too often is we sit in church thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be full of joy like all these people all around me? Just look at all these happy people entering into God’s presence. Why does God come through for everyone else but not for me?”

Want in on the big secret? Many, many other people in the room are thinking the exact same thing. And we probably all have thought that at some point.

What if you’re grieving a loss in your life? Maybe a loved one? Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy. What about a child? What about a marriage? A job loss? A home?

What if you’re caught in a mess of your own making? What if your addiction is crashing your life? What if you’re in a crisis pregnancy? What if you’re going to go to jail, maybe a DUI, shoplifting, drugs, or domestic abuse?

If you can’t go to church when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

Some churches are not safe places to be when you’re hurting. They question your faith if you show any signs of human frailty.

There are conversations we as the church need to have that we’re not having. Let’s go there.

1) Depression

Why are some chemical imbalances acceptable in the church today while others are not? No one would tell a diabetic not to take their insulin. But do we look down on people who need medication for depression as “unspiritual”? Why do we expect God to heal depression but not diabetes?

Everyone is different. We can’t fit people into formulas. Sometimes depression needs counseling, inner healing, and/or deliverance to address the root causes. But what about the people who do all that and still feel suicidal? More counseling? Maybe, maybe not. What’s God doing in that person? Sometimes the person needs medication to be leveled out enough to receive inner healing or deliverance. Sometimes it’s a legitimate chemical imbalance just like diabetes.

I’m not that person and I can’t tell the difference, so who am I to judge? I think I’ll leave that one up to God, and just be their friend, brother in Christ, and let them know how loved they are.

The sticky wicket comes when our method of choice, be it counseling, inner healing, deliverance, or what have you, doesn’t work. Do we blame the person? You don’t have enough faith! You just need to embrace your healing! How dare you break my perfect formula! That’s an injustice that needs to stop. When things that should work don’t work, it just means God’s not done and wants to do something even better in the person. We need to encourage them, not shame them.

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around people who suffer from depression?

2) Post-Abortive

One in three women has had an abortion. Of those, 70% identify as regular church attenders. Janet and I volunteer at our local crisis pregnancy center here in Fredericksburg, VA. The ones that break our heart the most are the ones who say, “Yes, I’m pro-life, but I have to get an abortion because I can’t tell my church.” The shame is too great. This is an injustice that needs to stop.

And it’s not just a women’s issue. Do the math. One in three men has fathered an aborted child. Abortion cuts to the heart of a man’s identity as protector just like it does the heart of woman’s identity as nurturer.

Is it possible that our judgmental attitude and lack of acceptance of girls in crisis pregnancies, especially our own, is what’s funding Planned Parenthood more than Congress? Are we the ones keeping them in business with our shaming and religiosity?

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around unmarried, pregnant young women? How do we act around post-abortive people? Is it safe for people in your church to admit they’ve had an abortion? How would you react?

3) Sexual Purity

Our girls in our churches are getting pregnant with our boys in our churches because we’re not talking about sex in our churches. Sex is part of life, and we should be talking about it in church regularly, from the pulpit, not just in Youth Group. Our silence is letting the media teach our teens and young adults about sex. They’re getting a very skewed, unhealthy, lying, but very slick, deceptive and appealing, message.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Frank Pravone, Priests for Life

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around teens and talk about sex?

Are You Willing?

… to have the hard conversation?

… to have the uncomfortable conversation?

… to be friends with that person?

… to let those people in your church?

… to admit that we don’t have our act together all the time?

… to come clean about our own doubts and fears?

… to, in vulnerability, be Jesus to the ones who need him the most?

Who knows, if we as the church are willing to do that, we just might find ourselves changing the world.

Please share this post on social media if you agree with starting this conversation.

4 Ways to Help Grieving People

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As Americans, we don’t feel comfortable around other people’s grief. We don’t know how to act. We don’t have a healthy understanding of grief. Death is a legitimate part of life. We ignore it. We pretend it’s not there. We’ve abstracted it away, and we really don’t know how to deal with it ourselves, let alone help someone else who is grieving a loss. We get really uncomfortable around grieving people because we have no grid for it.

A Brief Look Inside

What are our motivations? We want them to stop hurting. That’s good. But are we wanting that truly for them, or for us, because we feel uncomfortable around their pain? I admit there’ve been times I’ve said something I hoped would cheer them up, so the conversation would get all happy again. It was more about me being uncomfortable around their pain than it was about really caring about them.

We’ve never been taught how to be around people who are grieving. I pray this post gives you a grid for this. We need to learn how to be around other people’s pain. The first step is to understand grief.

We All Need to Grieve Sometimes. It’s OK.

By and large, a lot of stuff happens in this life that we need to grieve. Here’s a brief list:

  • Death of a loved one. Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy.
  • Abortion. Secular society applauds post-abortives, and the church shames them. Neither allows them to grieve.
  • Miscarriage. Never tell someone it was for the best. It wasn’t. They just lost a child.
  • Abuse. Never ok, and never the victim’s fault.
  • Divorce. Devastating.
  • Parent’s divorce. Someone else ripped your foundations apart.
  • Children’s divorce. Just as devastating.
  • Leave a church. Lots of church hurt out there.
  • Loss of relationship. Falling out of relationship with a friend, family member, co-worker, etc.
  • Job loss. Can be shattering to identity.
  • Change of career. Can be scary.
  • Loss of a home. Can be shattering to identity.
  • Health trauma. Car accident, military amputee, physical condition or disease, cancer, etc.

I’m sure you can think of more. All of these things represent loss. Anytime there’s a loss in our life, we need to grieve.

What Grief Is

Most of us don’t even know what grief is. Grief is the process of accepting a painful loss. It’s reconciling the painful things that happen in this world with my sense of being ok.

Grief is going through these 5 phases:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Acceptance

These aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily go in order. You can be totally fine with the loss one day (acceptance) and overflowing with anger about it the next. And the next day you’re just sad (depression). And they can repeat. You can come out of sadness (depression) only to be really angry about it again.

That’s ok. That’s normal. That’s healthy. It’s healthy to spend seasons in each one of these emotional phases, sometimes multiple times. The trick is not to get stuck permanently in any one phase, except acceptance, where we eventually want to land.

God gives us as much healing as we can stand at a time. We may have made it to acceptance six months ago and think we’re totally done with grieving. But then, Wham!, something triggers strong emotion and all of a sudden God’s taking us through these phases again at a deeper level, to gain a deeper level of healing.

That’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with you.

4 Ways to Help Grieving People

There’s a really good model for helping grieving people in the Bible. Job’s three friends usually get a bad rap, but they actually got it right for a whole week. Then they opened their mouths, and it was all downhill from there (see Job chapters 4-31.)

Look at Job 2:11-13:

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

1) Just Be with Them.

Job’s friends totally got this right. They just sat with him in the ashes of his life. Can you bring someone their favorite latte, and just sit with them, drinking it on the porch? Don’t try to say anything. Don’t try to make it better. You can’t. Just be there. They need your presence more than your words.

Please don’t say Christian-quippy things to cheer them up. You know, things like:

  • “It was for the best.” No it wasn’t! That’s why I’m grieving.
  • “Time heals all wounds.” Thank you Captain Obvious, but now I need to grieve.
  • “You’ll get over it.” Thank you for revealing you’re not a safe person for me to grieve around. I’ll make sure I always wear my happy mask around you.

Don’t try to cheer them up. Just your being there will do that, so don’t try to force it. Let them be sad, angry, whatever (obviously as long as they’re not being a danger to themselves or anyone else. In that event, call 911.) Don’t be afraid of their emotions. It’s ok for them display strong emotions.

2) Acknowledge the Pain and Validate their Grief.

It took Job a whole week to feel safe with his friends. When he finally spoke and expressed his grief, he probably wished he’d waited another week. They immediately launched into how all his troubles where really his own fault. Predictably, that did not help the grieving person. Here are some better examples:

“Job, you’ve just lost your family, your career, and all your savings in a few days. It really hurts, doesn’t it?” Phrasing it like a question invites Job to share his pain.

“You’ve experienced tremendous loss, Job. You need to grieve.”

“I’m sorry you’re hurting. You’ve been through a lot. It’s not easy, is it?”

C’mon, Eliphaz, would that have been so hard?

3) Reflect their Feelings Back

“So you feel like God’s abandoned you?” Try to put the person’s feelings into your own words and ask them if you’re understanding correctly. You don’t even have to be right for this to help them tremendously. Just the fact that someone cares enough about them to try to understand is hugely comforting.

Drawing their feelings out in a safe, non-judgmental, environment helps them process. They may not even know what’s going on inside, and articulating it to you helps them get in touch with those feelings, which helps them work through them.

Get out the thesaurus on your phone. “You say you’re feeling sad. Is that like melancholy or more bitter? Do you feel blue or hopeless?” Invite them to drill deeper into how they feel.

4) Pray & Intercede for Them.

Pray with them before you leave, but also pray for them when you’re alone. Our prayers for others are powerful. People can actually feel us praying for them, although they may not realize that’s where the relief they feel is coming from.

Don’t pray that God would take away the pain or rescue them from it. They need to grieve the loss. Instead, pray that God is tangibly with them in it. Pray that he brings them through it. Ask God to give you his heart for them. Ask him how you can show them they’re loved.

Because that’s what grieving people need the most. They need to know they’re loved in the middle of it all.

How about you?

Did someone help you when you were grieving? Did they do something well-meaning but stupid that really didn’t help? What have you learned about helping grieving people that I missed? Tell us your thoughts in the comments. And please share on social media if this would bless someone else.

To Be Right or to Be Jesus, that Is the Question

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“To be or not to be, that is the question,” asked Shakespeare through his character Hamlet, in the play by the same name. That’s probably both Hamlet’s and Shakespeare’s most famous line. But the question is incomplete. “To be or not to be WHAT?” What are we going to fall on our swords over? Being right or being Jesus?

When I was a teen, I was one opinionated bugger. Why shouldn’t I be? I thought. I’m right! And often I may even have been right, politically, morally, and spiritually. I was a Reagan-Republican, after all. I knew my Bible backwards and forwards. But I was missing something. In my self-righteousness, even when I got it right I missed the best. I so often missed Jesus’ heart.

If just being right is our goal, then we get really angry because everyone else is just so wrong. Just spend an afternoon on FaceBook and you’ll see what I mean. Being right, as an end in itself, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It takes a lot of energy arguing with all those people who just won’t get it, no matter how right we are. Maybe there’s a better way to change the world.

The Pharisees were totally right. Always, just ask them. They were conservatives who knew the Law, chapter and verse. They brought to Jesus a woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11), who according to the Law of Moses should be stoned. That was the “right” thing to do. (BTW, adultery’s not a solitary crime. According to the Law of Moses, the man also should be stoned [Leviticus 20:10]. I guess they rationalized that bit away – first clue they missed something – selective application of the Law. Being all men, the Pharisee’s probably rationalized excusing the man.)

But, fortunately for us, Jesus isn’t after right. He’s after best. The best does not violate what’s right, it supersedes it. You know the story, Jesus saved the woman without violating the Law of Moses. We should, too.

Jesus talks about dying to ourselves. In fact, he says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). But wait, that means denying my rights! That’s downright un-American. Was Jesus a communist or something?

No, but he’s after what’s best, not just what’s right, something better than what’s right. Sometimes, often, love means dying to our right to be right.

In high school, a certain bully was going to beat-up my friend Don. After successfully evading the bully one hot summer afternoon, Don drove past him walking home carrying a load of books under the hot sun. Don could’ve honked and waved as he drove by in his air-conditioned car. But he didn’t. He pulled over and offered the bully a ride.

No one was more surprised than the bully. The guy almost fell over. It took him a minute to realize the offer was genuine and Don wasn’t just goading him. “Why are you doing this? Why would give me a ride?”, asked one surprised bully.

“Because it looks like you need one,” my friend Don simply replied. The bully accepted, and they became close friends after that. (And nobody dared mess with Don again or the bully would pulverize them.)

My friend would’ve been within his rights to pass by the bully. But he correctly discerned the Kingdom of God had something better in mind.

This doesn’t mean we don’t hold people accountable when necessary. It’s actually love to hold criminals and abusers and narcissists accountable (1) to prevent future victims, and (2) so they have the opportunity to get help (if they don’t take the opportunity, that’s on them). It’s also love to discipline our children.

But in the common everyday stuff of life, mercy triumphs over judgement (James 2:13). The best triumphs over the right.

What about you? Does this resonate? Have you shown mercy and had it be better than the “right” would’ve been? Or have you had someone show you mercy when you didn’t deserve it? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if you think this post would bless someone else.