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I hear a lot of hurting people who’ve left church say, “Instead of church, I go for a walk and talk to Jesus,” or, “I go to a coffee shop with my Bible on Sunday morning and feel way better than I do at church.”
I get that. It will always feel better to distance ourselves from painful relationships. But the Bible frequently, and with great clarity, calls us to mend things, to reconcile, to avoid the temptation to run away. In some cases, it questions our faith if we refuse.
Before we leave, we’re compelled to ask God, not ourselves, if we’re hurt. If we try to do some DIY soul searching, or query our feelings, we’ll typically come up with the wrong answer. God is the only one qualified to plumb the depths of our spiritual garbage, filter out the things we can handle, and put them in our face.
If you pray the “God, am I hurt?” prayer, and the answer is “yep,” things can get scary. What’s required of us in the reconciliation process is super hard. Again, the forgiveness and courage that are called for in these arenas take a mountain of character.
Unfortunately, impossible moments are the only places where character can be purchased.
In all of the above prayers, it’s important that we open ourselves to answers we might not want to hear, which means that we’ll have to take steps we don’t want to take. In any big decision, all options need to be laid clearly on the table, and we need to be open to all of them.— Unknown
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