Sermon Illustrations on Empathy — page 2

Non-Christians: Friends Or Foes?

Luke 14:21

I recently heard a young man preach a sermon on the importance of sharing the Gospel. His philosophy was that as long as Christians are obeying God by witnessing to the lost, they should not care whether the lost accept Christ.

He proposed that this attitude takes the pressure off the one sharing the Gospel. After all, if we only care about obeying God and not the results of sharing our faith, what do we have to lose? While I agree that the decision of another person to accept or reject the call of Jesus is certainly not the responsibility of the one who shares the Gospel, I disagree that the Christian's attitude be one of not caring.

His charge for Christians to not concern themselves with non-Christians who reject Jesus bothered me for two reasons: God commands Christians to care, and God has convicted me many times for not caring.

Christians are charged in Colossians 3:12 to be compassionate: “Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” We are to care, just as Christ cares, for the lost souls of men.

I used to view non-Christians as outsiders. I looked at them as mere projects that I needed to check off my “I shared Christ with them” to-do list. I embraced sharing the Gospel of Jesus as my job, and I faithfully did it out of obedience. This “just do it” attitude is definitely in line with my personality. Spiritual gifts tests have confirmed that I am a prophet/teacher.

The downfall to a person with these gifts is that she is usually lacking in the compassion and mercy department. For example, when a turtle makes the dangerous decision to cross a busy road, many people think, “Poor thing.” I think, “Stupid turtle.” When someone comes to me with a problem, I'm not the huggy, let-me-cry-with-you type. I'm more the factual “Here's what you need to do so dry your eyes and get on with it” type.

Unfortunately, I must admit that while I had a heart for obeying God in sharing the Gospel with the lost, I did not have a heart for the lost. I can recall telling several people about Jesus and not grieving over their negative response to His plan of salvation. God convicted me that I was viewing non-Christians as a type of enemy, an enemy that I needed to conquer in the spiritual war of evangelism.

I would faithfully put on my armor, swing the sword of truth at whomever came my way, and walk off the battlefield without giving a second thought to where the wounded fell. I simply counted my efforts as medals toward spiritual heroism.

Jesus doesn't view non-Christians as the enemy but as victims of the enemy. According to Philippians 2:5, Christians are to have the same attitude as Christ. It took me a while to realize that not having a heart for the lost is just as disobedient as not sharing the Gospel. Christ longs to gather His lost sheep. He searches for them and delights in looking after them, “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: 'I myself will search for my sheep and look after them'“ (Ezekiel 34:11). He cares for them (1 Peter 5:7). It is impossible to have the attitude of Christ while not caring for the lost.

Befriending a non-believer for the purpose of sharing the Gospel is very different than becoming their companion. Companions are companionable, meaning they are suited for one another socially in their likes and dislikes. Therefore, we are not to be “companions” with a non-believer, but we are to befriend them in order to share the good news of Jesus with them.

Jesus befriended non-believers. He befriended and protected a prostitute when no one else would. He went into the house of Matthew, a lying and cheating tax collector, and ate dinner with a gang of sinners in order to subject them to His holiness. “When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?’ On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick'“ (Matthew 8:11-12). Jesus came to set the sinners free.

As we befriend non-believers for the sake of sharing the love of Christ, it is wise to establish some boundaries. First and foremost, we should never indulge in sinful activities in the name of witnessing. The Gospel should be shown with our actions as much as it is spoken with our words.

My friend Toma always says, “Your talk talks and your walk talks but your walk talks more than your talk talks.” It is also a good idea to let the non-believer know up front that you are devoted to Jesus. After all, we are not secret agents, but ambassadors for Christ. “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20a).

Although we should establish who we are in Christ, it is helpful to develop a relationship before bombarding them with Scripture. By showing interest in their lives and getting to know them, we develop trust in the friendship. Keep in mind that a good fisherman hides the hook.

In realizing these truths, I began to pray for a heart like His. As a result, He enables me to see the lost through His eyes and care for them through His love. I am becoming more and more aware of how precious they are to Jesus. My heart hurts for those who don't know my sweet Jesus. I long to see them embrace their maker, the giver of hope and joy. God is still working on me, but I am thankful that He is making my heart a little more like His each day.

Oh, and I simply must tell you ... I recently pulled my car over to help a turtle cross the road. God is definitely working on me.

Truth Extraction

John 4:7

A classic text on interrogating enemy captives offers a counterintuitive lesson on the best way to get information. [It is also good advice for witnessing more effectively.]

.....

Six months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison broke into public view, a small and fairly obscure private association of United States Marine Corps members posted on its Web site a document on how to get enemy POWs to talk.

The document described a situation very similar to the one the United States faces in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: a fanatical and implacable enemy, intense pressure to achieve quick results, a brutal war in which the old rules no longer seem to apply.

Marine Major Sherwood F. Moran, the report's author, noted that despite the complexities and difficulties of dealing with an enemy from such a hostile and alien culture, some American interrogators consistently managed to extract useful information from prisoners. The successful interrogators all had one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them.

Moran was writing in 1943, and he was describing his own, already legendary methods of interrogating Japanese prisoners of war. More than a half century later his report remains something of a cult classic for military interrogators. The Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association (MCITTA), a group of active-duty and retired Marine intelligence personnel, calls Moran's report one of the “timeless documents” in the field and says it has long been “a standard read” for insiders. (A book about the Luftwaffe interrogator Hans Joachim Scharff, whose charm, easygoing manner, and perfect English beguiled many a captured Allied airman into revealing critical information, is another frequently cited classic in the field.) An MCITTA member says the group decided to post Moran's report online in July of 2003, because “many others wanted to read it” and because the original document, in the Marine Corps archives, was in such poor shape that the photocopies in circulation were difficult to decipher. He denies that current events had anything to do with either the decision to post the document or the increased interest in it.

But it is hard to imagine a historical lesson that would constitute a more direct reproach to recent U.S. policies on prisoner interrogation. And there is no doubt that Moran's report owes more than a little of its recent celebrity to the widespread disdain among experienced military interrogators for what took place at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo when ill-trained personnel were ordered to “soften up” prisoners. Since the prison scandals broke, many old hands in the business have pointed out that abusing prisoners is not simply illegal and immoral; it is also remarkably ineffective.

“The torture of suspects [at Abu Ghraib] did not lead to any useful intelligence information being extracted,” says James Corum, a professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the author of a forthcoming book on counterinsurgency warfare. “The abusers couldn't even use the old 'ends justify the means' argument, because in the end there was nothing to show but a tremendous propaganda defeat for the United States.”

Corum, who recently retired as a lieutenant colonel after twenty-eight years in the Army and Reserves, mostly in military intelligence, says that Moran's philosophy has repeatedly been affirmed in subsequent wars large and small. “Know their language, know their culture, and treat the captured enemy as a human being” is how Corum sums up Moran's enduring lesson.

Part of why Sherwood Moran became such a legendary figure among military interrogators was his cool disregard for what he termed the standard “hard-boiled” military attitude. The brutality of the fighting in the Pacific and the suicidal fanaticism of the Japanese had created a general assumption that only the sternest measures would get Japanese prisoners to divulge anything. Moran countered that in his and others' experience, strong-arm tactics simply did not work. Stripping a prisoner of his dignity, treating him as a still-dangerous threat, forcing him to stand at attention and flanking him with guards throughout his interrogation -- in other words, emphasizing that “we are his to-be-respected and august enemies and conquerors” -- invariably backfired. It made the prisoner “so conscious of his present position and that he was a captured soldier vs. enemy intelligence” that it “played right into [the] hands” of those who were determined not to give away anything of military importance.

In his report (written in the form of a letter of advice to interpreters newly assigned to interrogation duty) Moran stressed that he would usually begin an interrogation by taking almost the opposite tack.

I often tell a prisoner right at the start what my attitude is!

I consider a prisoner (i.e., a man who has been captured and

disarmed and in a perfectly safe place) as out of the war, out of

the picture, and thus, in a way, not an enemy ... Notice that ...

I used the word “safe.” That is the point: get the prisoner to a

safe place, where even he knows ... that it is all over. Then

forget, as it were, the “enemy” stuff, and the “prisoner” stuff.

I tell them to forget it, telling them I am talking as a human

being to a human being.

Every soldier, Moran observed, has a “story” he desperately wants to tell. The interrogator's job is to provide the atmosphere that allows the prisoner to tell it.

Begin by asking him things about himself. Make him and his

troubles the center of the stage, not you and your questions of

war problems. If he is not wounded or tired out, you can ask him

if he has been getting enough to eat; if he likes Western-style

food ... You can ask if he has had cigarettes, if he is being

treated all right, etc. If he is wounded you have a rare chance.

Begin to talk about his wounds. Ask if the doctor or corpsman

has attended to him. Have him show you his wounds or burns.

(They will like to do this!) ...

On [one] occasion a soldier was brought in. A considerable

chunk of his shinbone had been shot away. In such bad shape was

he that we broke off in the middle of the interview to have his

leg redressed. We were all interested in the redressing, in his

leg, it was almost a social affair! And the point to note is

that we really were interested, and not pretending to be

interested in order to get information out of him. This was the

prisoner who called out to me when I was leaving after that first

interview, “Won't you please come and talk to me every day.”

(And yet people are continually asking us, “Are the Japanese

prisoners really willing to talk?”)

Moran spoke fluent Japanese, but more important, he was thoroughly familiar with Japanese culture, having spent forty years in Japan as a missionary. He used this knowledge for one of his standard gambits: making a prisoner homesick. “This line has infinite possibilities,” he explained. “If you know anything about Japanese history, art, politics, athletics, famous places, department stores, eating places, etc. etc. a conversation may be relatively interminable.” Moran emphasized that a detailed knowledge of technical military terms and the like was less important than a command of idiomatic phrases and cultural references that allow the interviewer to achieve “the first and most important victory” -- getting “into the mind and into the heart” of the prisoner and achieving an “intellectual and spiritual” rapport with him.

Moran's whole approach -- and Hans Joachim Scharff's, too -- was built on the assumption that few if any prisoners are likely to possess decisive information about imminent plans. (And as one former Marine interrogator says, even if a prisoner does have information of the “ticking bomb” variety -- where the nuke is going to go off an hour from now, in the classic if overworked example -- under duress or torture he is most likely to try to run out the clock by making something up rather than reveal the truth.) Rather, it is the small and seemingly inconsequential bits of evidence that prisoners may give away once they start talking -- about training, weapons, commanders, tactics -- that, when assembled into a larger mosaic, build up the most complete and valuable picture of the enemy's organization, intentions, and methods.

Moran's report had an immediate impact. The Navy and the Marines recruited second-generation Japanese-Americans to teach an intensive one-year language course for interrogators that included a strong emphasis on Japanese culture. James Corum notes that the graduates of this course were among the most effective interrogators in the Pacific Island campaigns of 1944 and 1945: Marine interrogators deployed to the Marianas in June of 1944 were able to supply their commanders with the complete Japanese order of battle within forty-eight hours of landing on Saipan and Tinian.

In contrast, in late 2002 the military's Southern Command had so few interrogators and interpreters that it was forced to employ inexperienced and untrained civilian contractors to perform these jobs at Guantanamo. The officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib had no interrogation experience himself and no skilled interrogators or interpreters working underneath him. He, too, turned to civilian contractors. Government auditors criticized these deficiencies in early 2004 and noted that several of the firms that supplied civilian contractors had no experience in such work. Yet the shortage of military interrogators continues, and the Department of Defense continues to employ people outside the military for some of this work. “They let a bunch of out-of-control contractors, CIA freelancers, untrained military-intelligence people, et cetera get turned loose under the promise and pressure of getting quick results,” Corum told me.

One of the most striking points Moran made was that those interrogators who tried the hardest to break down the morale of POWs were actually revealing their own fear -- ”fear that the prisoner will take advantage of you and your friendship.” This, he noted, was “the same idea that a foreman must swear at his construction gang in order to get work out of them.”

Of course there always is the danger that some types will take

advantage of your friendliness. This is true of any phase of

life, whether you are a teacher, a judge, an athletic trainer, a

parent. But there is some risk in any method. But this is where

the interpreter's character comes in ... You can't fool with a

man of real character....

Moran was saying that an interrogator who is genuinely tough has the confidence to know that he will always keep the upper hand, even while being nice. “Enlightened hard-boiled-ness,” he called this attitude. And he concluded that “strange as it may seem to say so,” the most important characteristic of a successful interrogator is not his experience or even his linguistic knowledge; it is “his own temperament” and “his own character.”

________

Adapted from article "Truth Extraction" by Stephen Budiansky in ATLANTIC magazine, June 2005.

*

A Southern Baptist Preacher Discovers Compassion For Homosexuals

Mark 2:15

Bob Stith teared up when he looked around the room after a news conference at Exodus International's 28th annual conference in Orlando. It is his ninth year to be directly involved in ministry to former homosexuals, and he regrets not having become involved earlier.

Stith, pastor of Carroll Baptist Church in Southlake, Texas, told the Florida Baptist Witness in an interview that he has made up for lost time. Two years ago, Stith made a motion at the Southern Baptist Convention that would generate what has become a meeting of minds of SBC leaders on the issue of homosexuality and how Southern Baptists can equip churches to minister in this area.

In June at the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix, an eight-member task force formed by LifeWay Christian Resources and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission urged the churches of the 16-million-member convention to “make themselves available to God's leading” in beginning ministries to reach “all the precious men and women for whom Jesus died.”

In Orlando, preparing to lead conferences that help facilitate interaction between Exodus and church and pastoral ministries, Stith said he “felt good in some small way” that he has been able to help bridge and bring together the SBC and Exodus.

In 2001, Stith said he thought he was “spitting into the wind” with his motion and even told others that. He was a small town pastor, convicted in the middle of a sermon years earlier that he was preaching on the issue with little regard for the redemption God offers.

“I asked myself, if someone who struggled with that heard me preach, would they come to me for help?” Stith recalled. “And I knew instantly that they wouldn't, not if they were in their right mind.”

Convinced he didn't know enough about the issue and burdened to find out more, Stith said he turned to Exodus for information and began to attend their conferences in 1995.

“I began to feel in my heart that this is going to be a watershed issue for the church and we weren't prepared for it,” Stith said.

He said his wife believes he is “much more compassionate” after being involved in Exodus. He said he's been “humbled” but also convicted that many pastors and church leaders who could be helped by Exodus in ministering to the community at large mistakenly think they must personally know someone struggling before they seek information.

After nine years, Stith said he is proud of the SBC's providing a mechanism for the churches to “stand in compassion and truth.”

“I was so moved,” he said in describing the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix where the task force, of which he was invited to be a part, declared to the world that Southern Baptists were interested in ministry to homosexuals.

“I knew that it was God because basically I'm a nobody in the convention. I knew it was a God thing,” Stith said. “We were, through the task force, able to bring focus on what Exodus is doing.”

SBC entities' cooperation with ministries like Exodus and Tim Wilkins' Cross Ministries will prevent duplication of ministry efforts and provide for a forum in which leaders can learn from one another, Stith said. An example of that was Exodus' presence in the exhibit area at the SBC in Phoenix. “It was a huge thrill to see this happen,” he said.

“I have just wanted to give back to them in some way,” Stith said of his role as facilitator between Exodus and the SBC.

=================

Version in my sermon on August 31, 2003:

Bob Stith is a small-town Southern Baptist pastor. Several years ago he was in the middle of a sermon he was preaching on homosexuality when it struck him -- he was good at condemning their sin, but he was showing little regard for the redemption God offers.

Bob got involved with Exodus, a ministry to those trying to leave homosexuality. Most pastors wait till they encounter such a person in their church, but he decided to make the first step. It taught him empathy for those who are torn inside by their sexual urges and desire for Christ. The stern preacher became a humbled man.

*

A Pope's Reversal

Job 1:21

In the period after the Crusades, the Catholic Church made its greatest claims for authority over secular power; not surprisingly, the secular powers made their own claims for who had the ultimate power. As part of this struggle, in 1303 Pope Boniface VIII excommunicated the king of France, Philip the Fair. In response, the king sent troops to arrest and kill the Pope.

The Pope’s enemies found him seated on his throne, wearing the mantle of Saint Peter and the crown that Constantine had given to Pope Sylvester. The troops asked the Pope if he would agree to renounce the papacy but he refused, saying he would rather lose his head. In French he told them, “Here is my neck, here is my head.”

The soldiers looted the Pope’s palace of gold, silver, fine clothing, and anything else they could get their hands on. A contemporary chronicler notes that they left the Pope “as poor as Job.” Pope Boniface watched it all and muttered, “God gave; God has taken away.”

The Pope was thrown in a dark cellar for three days and nights, sleeping in his papal robes on a straw mat. Finally some of his kinsmen set him free. Brought out into the light, he had himself taken, almost gropingly, to the public square. The reporter tells us what he said there: “‘Good men and good women, you know that my enemies came, and took away form me my goods and the goods of the Church. I have had nothing to eat and nothing to drink. If among you there is a good woman who wants to help me with her offering of bread and wine – and if she does not have bread and wine, a little bit of water – then I will give her God’s benediction and mine.’

“Everyone started to shout, ‘Long live the Holy Father,’ and all the women who were there and all the others ran immediately through the village to the Palace of the Pope, offering him, some wine, some bread, some water, and some of them, not finding enough containers, threw the wine and the water on the pavement of the Pope’s room in great quantity.

“And all could come before the Pope; the good and the bad; the small and the great; and all of them were able to talk to the Pope as to another poor man.”

[In Dante's "Divine Comedy" this pope (who was alive at the time) was portrayed as being in the eighth circle of the Inferno for the crime of selling positions in the church to the highest bidder.]

*

No One Made Me Feel As Good As the Rabbi Did

Luke 22:25

Soon after Rabbi Mendel Kaplan passed away, someone brought his car to the auto shop he had always used.

One of the workers recognized Rabbi Mendel’s car and asked: “Where is the Rabbi?”

When told that Rabbi Mendel had passed away, the man sat down and began to cry. “I know all I am is a simple mechanic, but the Rabbi treated me like I was a special human being,” he explained. “He used to take an interest in my life and that made me feel like a million dollars. No one in the world made me feel as good as the Rabbi did.”

________

The Jewish Observer, March 2004, Page 23, http://www.shemayisrael.co.il/jewishobserver/

Why Evil? Why This Evil?: Thoughts On the Movie Theater Killings In Colorado

Job 2:11

The late Christian philosopher Ron Nash called the problem of evil and suffering the most perennially difficult issue Christians have to face. And as much as we might like to ignore the problem, events like what transpired in that Aurora, Colorado, movie theater Thursday make that impossible.

Ignoring evil is a fundamentally wrong approach for Christians. Christianity is a worldview that claims to explain the world as it actually is, and the only world you and I have ever lived in is the one that is deeply and broadly impacted by evil.

Plus, to remain silent in the midst of events like this is to ignore the conversation that the culture is having with — or about — God right now. C. S. Lewis thought that suffering was God’s “megaphone,” and it’s true.

Of course, this conversation about God’s existence and goodness in the light of evil is not easy. Simplistic platitudes like “time will heal” or haphazardly lobbing Romans 8:28 grenades can be like rubbing Christian-ese salt into gaping, emotional wounds. Remember, Job’s friends were pretty helpful for their suffering friend: Until they opened their mouths.

It’s important to remember that while Christianity offers an explanation for the existence of evil per se, when Christians offer specific reasons for specific evil, they over-speak their biblical and theological qualifications. Applying logical answers for the existence of evil to the emotional and personal struggles associated with a particular evil is to miss how Jesus Himself confronted it.

In the face of His weeping friends whose brother had just died, Jesus wept too. In fact, He wept despite knowing that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead and turn the family’s weeping into celebration. Why would He weep if He knew all this? Because it was the world He had made and the people He had fashioned in His own image that were broken.

To paraphrase the title Neal Plantinga used for his book on the impact of human sin, this world is “Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be.” And because we live in a world that often veers so distinctly from the good design and order given it by God, trying to offer a tidy explanation for this evil or that evil is futile.

And at the same time, it’s quite valid to ask why we recognize evil as such. Why do we recognize the actions of the gunman as disordered but honor the three men who lost their lives by shielding their girlfriends? Or 21-year-old Stephanie Davies, who chose to apply pressure to her friend’s severe wound rather than save her own life?

You see if ours is merely a world “red with tooth and claw” — that is, if ours is a creator-less world that arose by chance, and nature has no rhyme or reason — then heroic acts would be indistinguishable from despicable ones.

But no. Our ability to recognize evil as evil reveals something about how we are made.

And still the final word we Christians can offer is one we must offer: God is not absent. He is present in the world of human suffering, and He Himself suffered too. Here I quote the English minister Edward Shillito, after seeing the carnage of World War I:

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;

Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;

We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,

We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.

The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;

They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;

But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,

And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

________

Letting It Happen To Your Heart

Matthew 9

It will be hard to forget some of the most heartbreaking images of the end of the 20th Century - like those tens of thousands of Kosovo refugees fleeing from the attacks of Serbian soldiers and police. Day after day, we would hear reports on the news of how many more refugees had arrived on the Albanian or Macedonian border, how many were jammed into makeshift camps, desperate for food, for water, for shelter, for a feeling of being human again. Most of the major networks had correspondents on the scene who would report from that sea of humanity and misery. In a moment of disarming honesty, one reporter said, “When you cover a tragedy like this, you have to put up a steel wall to protect yourself or you can't do your job.” But then he went on to say, “But I have to confess to you, suddenly today my steel wall came down and I just lost it.”

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about “Letting it Happen to Your Heart.”

Maybe it's time for your steel wall to come down. If it does, you'll be on your way to having a heart like your Savior's.

Our word for today from the Word of God is from Matthew 9, beginning in verse 35. It's about a heart that feels what others are too busy or too hard to feel. It says, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages ... preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Now, the original Greek version of this passage reveals how deep Jesus' feelings really were. That Greek word for “had compassion” is actually rooted in the word for “entrails.” In other words, when Jesus saw the need of these people, something happened way down deep inside the very deepest parts of His heart. He wants to give you a heart like His. And in the stress and pressures and superficiality of the world we live in, it's easy to inadvertently build a steel wall that keeps us from feeling the lostness of the people around us. But when you lose that, you've lost an essential part of what it means to have a Christ-like heart.

Yes, there are people who care too much. They make every burden their burden, and they end up burning out because they didn't turn those burdens over to Jesus, because they tried to make every need their concern instead of focusing on one or two and making a real difference in those.

But the far more common heart problem is not overcaring, it's undercaring. Most of us need to let the wall around us come down - to pray this transforming prayer, “Lord Jesus, help me see what You see when you see my neighbor, my co-worker, my friend, the people around me who have no relationship with You.” See, even in ministry, it's easy to lose the broken heart that brought you into ministry in the first place. What once was passion can become just profession. You do most of the same things, but the passion is gone.

I heard recently of an urban pastor who often waited until sermon time to come to the platform. One Sunday, though, he wasn't there at sermon time. So, two deacons went back to the pastor's office and they found him looking out his window at the nearby houses and crying. One deacon said, “Pastor, you're weeping over the needs of the people in this neighborhood, aren't you?” The pastor said, “No. I'm weeping because it doesn't move me like it used to.”

Maybe that's you. Let the wall come down. Let Jesus put a piece of His caring, broken heart in you. Let Him help you see what He sees, feel what He feels for the people around you - for some people with a need He wants you to do something about. Living with your heart open makes every day a mission and every day a holy adventure.

________________

*

Loneliness In Cross Bearing

Mark 8:34

The normal Christian is very much aware of the command of Jesus to "pick up your cross" or to "carry your cross" (Matthew 16:24, 10:38; Mark 8:34-38). Instinctively the sincere Christian will drop to his knees and cry out to God, "Lord, I will pick up my cross and follow you!" And he begins the life of cross bearing.

But soon loneliness seems to set in. The Christian finds himself very much alone.

Though in the midst of family, friends and other Christians, he cannot seem to find anyone with a similar heart. He cannot locate another person who shares the deeper walk with God, or the intense relationship with God he is experiencing. It is lonely "carrying the cross." The burden becomes heavy, yet he cannot seem to find someone else to share this with. Others do not seem to understand him, or his cross.

There is a uniqueness about the relationship with Christ in cross bearing. It is "your cross, and no one else's." No one else has a cross like yours, so they do not seem to understand you. A.W. Tozer, in his book, "Man the Dwelling Place of God," shares with great insight here, as he states, "Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as man apart...." (p. 171).

This sense of aloneness in carrying your cross will drive you back to God, who alone can really help you.

The cross you carry is really in your heart, and only God can walk with you there. You may try to explain the intimacy with God, the heaviness of heart God has given you, and the burden of what you learned from God while alone with him. You may seek to find someone to share it with, but you just cannot find anyone who truly understands. Go to God immediately and do not be surprised if others not only do not understand you, but also will not know exactly how to help you. They, if sensitive, will say, "Please know that I will be praying for you!" This will be some form of enabling for your cross bearing.

As you carry your cross, you will experience two other things:

1. You will be much more quiet while with others.

2. You will not withdraw from those with deep problems.

In fact, you will sense even a greater ability to help carry their load, for you now have a greater appreciation of what it means, and the resources God has granted.

*

Sharing the Pain

"Often the most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to share the pain - to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves."

(M. Scott Peck, Leadership, Vol.15, no.2)

Choose Heartbreak

Isaiah 59:8

Sermon on having God's heart. Isaiah 59:8-16 and Colossians 3:12

CHOOSE HEARTBREAK

=================

I. How tender is your heart?

II. God's heart must break often.

A. Injustice in world.

B. Human suffering and death.

C. The great dilemma - why?

III. Having a heart like God's heart.

A. Essence of discipleship - take on God's character.

B. What should break our heart.

C. We face a choice.

IV. How to break your heart.

A. Train your heart to be [_compassionate_].

B. [_Put yourself in a situation_] where your compassion will be

challenged.

C. Associate with people who [_exemplify compassion_].

D. Turn your [_feelings_] into [_actions_].

E. Don't [_lose sight of the big picture_].

F. Keep your [_focus_] on [_God_].

V. A broken heart is a happy heart.