Wounded By God's People

Anne Graham Lotz has spoken on seven continents in more than 20 foreign countries proclaiming God's Word in arenas churches seminaries and prisons her angel ministries is located in North Carolina where she and her husband Annie are empty-nesters in Raleigh all three children have flown and Ann your newest book at first was quite a surprise and then it was an affirming yes this is so relevant so right on time and I want to just frame a statement you make loud and clear God loves the wounded and the wounded and you confess to being both that's right I think we all are it's just hard to acknowledge that we hurt people too but there are a lot of hurts out there and not just hurts everybody gets hurt but the hurts that are inflicted by God's people people that you have come to love and trust feel safe with people within your own church but they're within your own Christian community those those wounds go deep and can be very hard to get over and sometimes we find that when people wound us we attribute that to God and so when we're rejected by God's people we feel God's rejecting us and we walk away not only from the church and God's people but we walk away from God so how we handle our hurts is critical that's right that's right Beth Moore did your forward and she says when you find good news at a bad time you have to tell it we knew and Graham Lotz wouldn't keep her healing to herself you began this theme this month for us with probably the biggest of several wounds and that was being ousted from your church of how many years or 15 years 15 years - applause I mean you wonder why I was surprised finish that story because I would like to because on its it's a healing it took it's a process though we were out of the church for a year we no met with the home fellowship within our our home and then after that everybody in the home fellowship went their different ways and we joined a church and then as a result of that we helped to plan another church and my husband was involved in another church plant that also went south when he was on the board of elders and the group of elders decided they didn't like the young pastor they had called and they began to maneuver him and actually ran him out of the church when he left we left so for the second time we were believers in exile we were outside the church this time I didn't even go to church I don't even try just thought I'm not gonna have a home fellowship I'm not gonna go back to church I'm just gonna sit here and watch TV on Sunday morning which is what I did and but it's not very green make almost confession I want to tell you something more because it was God looking back god is amazing the day we left that church my husband got a phone call from a friend of our children and he said he had a friend coming to our area and he wanted to plant a church with my husband show him around so my husband said sure and I was just thinking I don't want to hear it I don't want to know it I don't want to get involved in another church plant so my husband helped help him for about three months and finally said and you just have to meet this fella so I went and had breakfast with him and with my husband and and I just sense God's hand on his life and so one year to the day that we left that church we were back in trying to plant a church inviting people in our home getting the church started and it's the church where we attend today it's a church that's different it meets in a theater lots of unsaved people coming but every week people find in Christ of the theme or the aim is just to connect people to Jesus for life change and it's not perfect but we're back in church and you know I don't know why we've had that experience somebody asked me that yesterday you know why have you had all these bad experiences and I'm sure it's something about me that that provokes it but at the same time I believe God has allowed me to have these wounds because he knows that I like Beth said I'm not going to keep it to myself and maybe I'll help somebody else on their healing journey if I just share something of what I've been through I think you've answered to some degree a question that was on my heart because we're hearing the statistics about people leaving the local church and do you have a sense of just how much of that is tied to being wounded in the church well the statistics show that the majority of people at least in the United States who leave the church I'll leave because they've been hurt by somebody there which is stunning and of course one thing I wonder how easily are we hurt so we have to be careful that we're not too easily offended but then again I think we need to recognize that there are wounds within the church I want to be very careful not to be a wonder and I have been but the fact that I have seen that in myself as made me much more careful and then at the same time to reach out to people who are wounded and try to invite them back which is one purpose for this book actually because I want to go out there and find the people who have left the church still what I call believers in exile so they still love Jesus they still read their Bibles maybe they have Christian friends maybe they're in a home fellowship just avoiding church because they've been so burned but I want to find them and bring them back and let them know God loves them and they can come back into fellowship and you walk them through in such a loving way this isn't a church bashing book by the way and here's an important challenge the scripture talks about fellowshipping and Christ's sufferings we shouldn't be surprised that Jesus was betrayed you pointed out in the book Judas Peter this is part of being like Christ going through what he did but self-exile becomes the tragic consequence how should we approach what kind of glasses do we need to put on so that we don't end up D railing because there's a high cost to being in exile as a wounded believer well there is enough and I think there's a time for everything so I think the time out of the church that we had was good and but I can tell you that when we got back into the church in my spirit there was a sense that I was more secure there's something in the spiritual realm having the safety of that church authority over you there's a protection there in this spiritual world I believe that's that I need to have and I want the accountability I love the fellowship I want to be able to serve within the church and help other people grow within that context but but sometimes you just can't push people too quickly and if they've been deeply wounded and hurt you give them time but then at a certain point then I think they need to make the decision to come back and my biggest concern is not the relationship with the church it's their relationship with God and I think if they get their relationship with God sorted out and really healed then I think the church will take care of itself because I want to have fellowship with others who love the Lord that when you had those painful moments with close friends did you stand back and say is there something I've done Lord show me is there something I'm not seeing you talk about spiritual blind spots that's right yeah and we all have them don't we it's just so much easier for me to see your sins than it is the seamen and I think also it's not only easier to see yours but it takes more courage to see mine and we don't want to look at ourselves the way God sees us we we have an image of ourselves and we believe our own PR you know and and then to have that ripped away and to see that you know we're no better than the people at whom we've been pointing their finger then I think that's hurtful threat it's hard but I believe it's like Isaiah and Isaiah chapter 6 verse 5 when he saw the light of the holiness of Jesus and it was Jesus sitting on the throne and you know in the year that King Uzziah died and then Isaiah says woe to me I'm ruined by my sin I look I'm a man of unclean lips and I live amongst two people unclean lips and what he was acknowledging was that he was no better than the people that had been preaching - and that he was a sinner like they were a sinner and then he came in an Old Testament sense of the crossing angel for the kolnas tongue yin and cleansed his mouth and so I feel that one of the things we need in the church is to come back to the cross and not for them the cross is for the unsaved where the cross is for you and may God's children and we need to come back and confess our sin and allow the blood of Jesus to cleanse us deep down as we confess and acknowledge the things that we haven't had the courage to admit you know we can I can admit your sin but to admit mine it just it takes courage and when we do that and allow them to cleanse us and to forgive the other person and to reach out to them and look it just sets our spirit free we not only feel like we've got a bath on the inside but we feel like we have wings you know and we can move forward with energy and strength and humility for sure yes and joy that's exactly right and I'm sure if we're really struggling to find that what could it be the spirit of truth will come and help us right and that's what David prayed you know the search me O God and know my heart and try me and know my ways and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting so we need to search our heart we see it culturally but I think we need as believers to see the the danger you point out in the book and that is that wounded people become wound erse we're all vulnerable to them and you know actually that's what we're seeing in the Middle East right now because the book is based on the story of Abraham Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael and and we see what happened almost 4,000 years ago in that home where the wounds became wounded people and they became wonders and it just was a cycle of pain that now has erupted in our present time to be a whole nations are involved in it and her whole world is caught up in the turmoil and it goes right back to wounds that were inflicted within the home by God's people and then in turn they were wounded and they became wound errs and it just you know I don't know if we have your trials to thank for the delightful insights into the patriarchs story Abraham Sarah Hagar it never occurred to me that she was probably chattel sent off by Pharaoh when he realized he'd been hoodwinked well I about Sarah and said here take her and all this good stuff with you Hagar was listed after the camels so I can't I can't after the camels so babe they were listed before yeah so you're right she was wounded she would have been wounded as a slave in fros household then to be given as a gift less than camels to Abraham taken to a foreign country foreign culture foreign language and she lived there for ten years so you know in 10 years time living with Abraham and Sarah she'd come to love them to trust them she had watched Abraham build his altars calling the name of his God she'd begun to feel at ease I feel in her heart she was longing to know God herself and then all of a sudden she's jerked out and told she's to have Abraham's baby and so the wounds I mean so the cycle begins a whole cycle in that story and it's a great story I love how you imagine the relational stuff between especially between Sarah and Hagar old boy girlfriend of America um I want to quote you and believe me I don't believe in Harlequin I just I don't know it's just real life these are real people and they Sarah exalted in the hero's role of faith in Hebrews 11 nasty stuff and that encourages me none of us is perfect that's right um you say I don't want Jesus to return and find me licking my wounds plotting revenge holding a grudge that's right and I believe he is very soon to come back so I think that we need to live in the light of his return so I want to live my life so that five minutes before I see him face to face I have no regrets and I know I'll have some because we're all gonna have some regrets but but I want to live my life intentionally so that's I have a few regrets as possible and to hang on to bitterness and I you know defines bitterness and unforgiveness as drinking the poison hoping the other person will die you know it just doesn't do anybody any harm except ourselves and turns us into a bitter spiritually shriveled person and we need to just let it go to forgive that person to reach out to them and love to demonstrate our forgiveness and to move on and actually Hagar at the end of this story I don't know if I should tell what happens to her but she gets removed God's people you know Abraham throws her out of the house and it's for good reason and God command and that's that's something else that's a whole nother deal because there's sometimes we wound people and God commands us to do it well if we have to let go a staff person or we have to hold somebody accountable there are times I've wounded people and no it's been in obedience to God's command and God told Abraham to throw Hagar out let her go that's right Ishmael and and Isaac could not live together and so Hagar has thrown out of her house by Abraham at God's coming can you imagine her wounds because she was not only rejected by Abram but you know she felt rejected by God but he comes to her on that desert road and he seeks her out and tells her that she's going to be the mother of nations and so she the first thing she does is go find a wife for her son and you know she's trying to get grandchildren have those descendants and in claiming God's prom for our future so Hagar did not live in the past she she was embracing what God had for her in the future you can't go forward by looking in the rearview mirror so we have to let that go and then embrace what God has for switch in hey cars case I think was very different than what she thought her life would be like and sometimes the picture we have for our lives what we think God is going to do or what we're expecting is very different than what happens and if we keep clinging to what we had thought what we had wanted what we had planned we'll miss what God has for us that's it I believe is more about Hagar she could have gotten what she wanted and stayed in Pharaoh's household have stayed in Abraham self she never would have become the mother of nations all Arabs and Muslims did they look to her or look to Ishmael as their father and Abraham as their father and Hagar of course as their mother so she's she is a woman who's honored in history and she has become the mother of nations greatly beloved of God but she would not have done that had she just stayed in the past do not miss this book

Channel: 100huntley

Views: 91,075

Keywords: interview, huntleystreet, sep-16-13, HS9458, 100huntley, billy graham, anne graham lotz, church, wounded, God's people, god, forgiveness

Id: sbEzhYM6inU

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 16 2013