Tana City Church Preaching
Kim Midgley | Hebrews 12v1-13 - God's discipline trains us
You know, we used to have these get-togethers where we would combine our services, the Malagasy and the English, before the French meeting was planted, and we reached a point where we could no longer fit in this room with benches and 450 chairs. So we kind of reached about four, five hundred people when we were all together. We're still at that size numerically, if not bigger, if we combine the English and the Malagasy and the French meetings, which has actually logistically become too complicated for us to pull off. So one of the things that I'm missing about our past was that we could gather sometimes together as a whole church, the English, the Malagasy and the French, and really logistically it's impossible these days. And so we're in that interim season now where this church should still be growing, but those churches are growing while we're not even able to observe, for many of you you wouldn't even know, but like when the Malagasy meeting ends, we see a kind of an exodus of lots of people going past, and that congregation has grown beautifully. So why am I telling you all of that? Because we must have a testimony of what God is doing. He is doing things sometimes even when you can't see, you can't see that growth is happening, that growth is happening. And you might feel like there's opposition or attrition, but God is actually still on the move, still taking us forwards. And that is actually like a vague introduction to what I want to share this morning, because we're going to continue today with Hebrews 12. So our verses today are going to be Hebrews 12 verse 1 to 13. It's Father's Day, Happy Father's Day to the Father's, we pray God would bless the Father's in this church. And as we talk about that, it is fitting to speak of the unpopular task of discipline, not self-discipline, but receiving discipline, and no one wants to hear about that. But when I look at Hebrews 12, discipline is a big part of the chapter, but there's something else I want you to recognize as we go into these verses, there's something marvelous that happens in Hebrews 12, because up until now, Hebrews chapter 1 to 10, we've seen a lot about Jesus, the better priests, the better covenant that he brings, the better tabernacle that he himself is for us, so all been about the sun and his supremacy. And then in verse 11, we get an interlude where we get a whole list of the heroes of the faith, the saints of the Old Testament who truly weren't heroes, they were just ordinary people exercising faith in God, and they are credited, therefore, believing in God. And you realize that they're very ordinary people. Some prostitutes, some failures in their marriage, some had disastrous family situations where brothers tried to kill their brothers, and yet they're commended for the portion of their lives that they believed God and trusted in him. So actually Hebrews 11 is not just glory stories, but shocking stories, stories of endurance, to success and victory, as well as stories of endurance, to martyrdom, to destruction and ultimate reward in heaven. So after chapter 11, we read chapter 12, and the shift here is that we get now the view of what the Father is doing through all of this. We've seen the sun in his supremacy, we've seen the people following Jesus or following God by faith, and now we see in this chapter something of the Father and his plan and his motivation and what's going on in his mind. So we read from Hebrews 12 verse 1, I'm going to read the 13 verses and then unpack them with you. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the boundary and perfect of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, consider him who endured from sin as such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood, and have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure, God is treating you as sons, for what son is there whom his Father does not discipline. If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected him. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, and he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, lift your dripping hands and strengthen your weakness and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Every father, as we look at your word this morning, as we spend some time examining these verses, I ask that you would speak to us and change the way we see you and the way we see adversity in Jesus' name. Amen. The following on from chapter 11, the writer directs us in how to use the Old Testament as an example of saints who endure it. Those Old Testament saints that we read about last week, they endure it much. Hebrews 12 verse 1 says, "Since we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, let us also, in other words, like them, we also should lay aside. Every weight and sun which cling so closely and then run with endurance, the race that said before us. Each one of us is in a race. We're running. You are a runner. You don't like some of you. The last thing you want to do is get on a treadmill or run down the road at full speed, but this is you're actually an endurance athlete spiritually. In terms of walking with God through this life, it's a long race and we have to run and we have to keep in that race. So we look to Jesus, the founder and perfect of our faith. Jesus is said before us in verse 2 as the one who initiated, in other words, started off faith in your life and the one who perfects or completes faith in your life. So he's the alpha and the omega, which is the A and Z, A and Z. He's the beginning and the end of this journey of faith. And scripturally, he's also everything in between. In other words, it's by his grace that we are sustained. We stand in that grace and we continue in faith because of God's goodness in our lives. So we look to Jesus, the founder and perfect of our faith. He hasn't abandoned us in the middle of the race, who for the joy that was said before endured the cross. So there was a joy ahead that Jesus saw and that's what caused him to continue and endure even the suffering of the cross, despising the shame. In other words, he scorned it. He said, "What can you do to me?" Like we say, "Oh, death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?" He is risen. You see, he looked down with contempt and destroyed those things. They overcame and he rose victorious and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. So in those two verses we see that there are these witnesses, the Old Testament saints, but the picture there is not that they are looking on as spectators of our race. Don't misunderstand those witnesses. In fact, the Greek word used here for witnesses is "marthus" from which we get the English word "mata", which means those who have actually paid the ultimate price. They have laid down their lives for their faith. And so we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, those who are not witnessing us, but they are witnesses of God. They have seen something of God and they have pursued that and they have run hard after God to the point that they ended their race, they died, they're gone. So they're not standing over the balcony of heaven, cheering you on in the race. It's not that kind of witness. Witnesses are those who are witnesses of God, they're not Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't mean Jehovah's Witnesses, they've seen God, you know what I mean. So they're inspirational to the Hebrew believers by their example of following God, no matter the cost or the outcome. That's what Chapter 11 said. It said that some of them had great victories and some of them suffered terrible faiths, but they walked in faith and they didn't get everything that God had promised. But they saw what was coming and they held on and they endured. So we have to see what's coming, believing the promises of God. We are co-heirs with them of those promises. In the light of their faith we too should hold fast and in addition to that layer side every weight and sin that clings so closely and run with endurance. Looking to Jesus, we're not looking to the witnesses, they're not looking at us, but Jesus is looking at us, Jesus is concerned with our lives and our race. We've learned so much in this book about how God is involved directly in our lives and once our lives to be directly lived before him. In other words, don't live your life as if God is not there. Every day, every second, every breath, God is watching you, every breath you take, sorry, sting, release, whatever, it's a stalker song. But God is the one who is witnessing us and we should be running this race before him, looking to Jesus, looking at what he has done and the right is to consider him who endured from sin is such hostility against himself, it was personal so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. You see, there's a time that's going to come in your life where you're going to say, "This hostility is directed against me. These guys are trying to kill me. Life is too hard for me. I can't take it anymore. These just aren't working out the way I expected or hoped and where it's God in all of this." And as a Christian, you get to the point, like the Hebrew Christians did, where they thinking, "This deal isn't working. We want to get out of here and we want to go back to something that worked like the ceremonial system. We could control that. We could understand that. We could just bring animals and then we could, you know, superstitiously believe everything would be all right." But no, Jesus endured such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted in your struggle. You have your struggle, okay? And then the right says in this sentence, "In your struggle against sin, you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." What does he mean? He means you're still alive. See, Jesus, by shedding his blood, he died. The life is in the blood. The symbol to the Hebrew was when the blood has been shed, the sacrifice is dead. It's been made. So the life was poured out when the blood was poured out in your struggle against sin. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Jesus has gone further than we have, his died, he endured to the point of giving his life. This is God's Son. And if he suffered, it is not wrong to expect that we also would suffer. But he didn't suffer needlessly. He suffered in order to save us. The Father wasn't abusive, the Son went to lay his life down for us. He suffered willingly in order to be our Savior. His purpose in God's plan was to be the Lamb of God, that God set forth as a propitiation for our sins. So that was the purpose of Jesus' life. And the purpose of his suffering was not at all pointless. He suffered in order to save us. Now, correspondingly, so too, if we suffer, God has a purpose in our suffering. And in fact, when we understand the next verses, it's about that the writer goes straight from this idea that Jesus died, he endured to the point of death for our sake to save us as the Son of God. And the next verse, verse 5 says, "Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?" Can you see the connection? So there's this connection between the Son of God, who is truly a son, who endured to the point of death in order to save us. Now you too should expect to be treated as a son. Have you forgotten the exhortation in the verse 5 says, "That addresses you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. God has a purpose in our suffering. When we get to verse 10, we actually get to that purpose, but I'm going to jump ahead so that this makes sense. In verse 10 it says, "He disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness." We may share his holiness. That's the purpose, there's a goal in this. He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. So we're going to get to that verse, but let's back up again. Have you forgotten the exhortation the writer asks, that addresses you as sons? Do you know what that exhortation was? You know, we also, we suppose they've studied our Babbles like the Hebrew Christians that the writer is writing to, they knew the Old Testament. Many of them spent hours studying the word of God, and in the word of God there was an exhortation in Proverbs chapter 3, Proverbs chapter 3 verse 11 said, "My son do not despise the Lord's discipline or be wary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son, in whom he delights." So there's a son and a father, and the father delights in the son, and the father disciplines the son, and those two are in perfect harmony, they're in agreement. So my son do not despise the Lord's discipline or be wary of his reproof. So this is in Proverbs chapter 3, and the writer says, "Have you forgotten this exhortation?" I think some of us probably forgot it, we didn't realize Proverbs 3 was that important, but it is. So the writer says, "The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives." In verse 7, "It is for discipline that you have to endure, God is treating you as sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline, the NIV puts that first praise as endure hardship as discipline. It is for discipline that you have to endure, endure hardship as discipline is another way that that gets phrased." When I look at that, I see something quite significant there. The writer is absolutely convinced that the hardship that the Hebrews are experiencing in their walk of faith is a form of discipline. How can he be so sure? How can he be that certain that what's happening to them is actually okay? Because for some of them it feels really bad, it feels like I lost my job, I'm being mocked for being a Christian, people have rejected me, I'm being discriminated against, and where is God? Life has just got worse. When the writer says endure hardship as discipline, you know what, the writer is absolutely confident of God's sovereignty. That's an important theology. God is not against us, he is for us. The writer's confident of this because he's able to say endure hardship as discipline and that's coming from a father who delights in the childhood he disciplines. So endure hardship as if it is discipline from God, coming from a father who loves you and delights in you. So rather than God being your enemy in the trials of life or a distant father who is absent, he's right there allowing that to come upon you and you're going through something that's painful and it's not a sign of God's displeasure but a very fact that he delights in you that he's allowing you to go through this hardship. Endure it therefore, endure hardship as discipline, this is the anti-prosperity gospel. Sorry guys, this one is not like it will feel better if you receive Jesus. Certainly in many cases you receive absolute blessing in every case when you receive Jesus and persecution. That's what Jesus said, you're going to receive houses, when you go with him he'll give you more family, more houses and persecution. Why do I see this sovereignty of God here? By saying we should receive hardship as a discipline, the writer is explaining that God does things in our lives, allows circumstances and troubles as discipline. The writer is saying God is totally in control. This is not the devil's victory, God is using the devil. This is not bad luck that happened in your life, God is using the universe. You know those days you think the universe is up to get you, everything just keeps going wrong. It's not bad luck, it is God who is working in our lives. Everything that we experience in life has somehow been filtered through the hand of God. That he would not allow you to be tempted beyond what you could bear because he says that in his word. That he would not allow something to happen to you beyond what you could endure. So Peter, Satan has requested, demanded to serve you and I'll allow it, but I've prayed for you that your faith would not fail and your faith won't fail. So God could bring a tragedy into your life, allow it, it's from the devil, yes God doesn't do evil, but God allows it and you go into this deep valley with God. And you think God has somehow been who had wings overcome by the devil. It can never happen, that's why we have the book of Job in the Bible because Job is living his life as a God follower who has faith in God, he's not overtly doing anything wrong at all. He's trying to just be a good guy I guess, he's got a wife and kids and the devil goes up and appears before God. In the book of Job you can read it, the opening verses are fascinating and it's like where if you've been roaming to and fro throughout the earth looking for trouble, wanting to cause trouble and God says have you seen my servant Job like that guy is a great servant. He was like no I think if I take all his stuff away he'll denounce you God. The Lord says okay, now the Lord's not playing games with Job, the Lord's not playing games with us either, nothing that comes into your life has no purpose, God redeems everything. So when you suffer tragedy God will redeem that thing in your life. So here comes the devil, he takes away Job's stuff, Job suffers a bit, he doesn't turn on God. It gets worse and worse, it escalates Job suffers grievous losses. By the end of the book of Job we see something profound where the relationship between Job and God has changed and Job makes the great declaration where he says I had heard of you but now I have seen you. Now if you could move from being far away from God to being nearer to God that is probably the most valuable thing in all of your life. You could move from being poor to rich, it means nothing, the riches could destroy you or break your heart, pierce you through with griefs as James says. So wealth can betray you, hurt you and destroy you but God is not betraying you, hurting you and destroying you, he is moving you from a place where you had heard of him to a place where you know him and the way he does that is through hardship, discipline. This isn't discipline for doing wrong, it's not punishment like hey you didn't eat your veggies so now go stand in the corner. That immature view of discipline is not what the writer to the Hebrews is thinking about. He's not thinking about punishment for crimes, it's not like you stole a cookie and now you're going to get spanked by God, it's not like God is coming to discipline you that way, it's like God is seeing your whole life is here and I need to get you here and the way I bring you from here to here is through hardship, that's discipline, he's disciplining you by bringing something into your life that constrains you, that changes you. So the writer is saying God is totally in control because if you say this blanket statement in your hardship is discipline, he's basically saying all hardship God is using, therefore this is not the devil's victory, God is using the devil as he did with Job. This is not bad luck, God is using the universe and physics or even overriding the laws of physics so that you win the lottery of bad luck. Hebrews 12, this 8 says if you're left without discipline in which all have participated, meaning everyone's had some experience of discipline, then your illegitimate children are not sons. So he's saying that you, if you're a true Christian, you will experience the discipline of God and if God never brings his discipline into your life, then you're probably not a true Christian. If you've never experienced that sense of God, why are you orchestrating hardship against me? Well, if you've never experienced that, if you've only ever enjoyed being a Christian going to church every Sunday, you might not be a Christian. Some points in your life, God is going to come and he's going to attack things that need to be broken in order for you to be made free of those things. He's going to attack ideas in your mind, he's going to attack idols in your heart, he's going to go to war against you and your prey should be God please win. Triumph over me. If you're left without discipline in which all have participated, then your illegitimate children are not sons. Besides this, we've had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them, shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live. Be subject to, so the right says you need to be subject to God in order to find life, in order to truly live you need to submit to God, in order to truly experience life you have to die to yourself, you have to endure this suffering and separation from this world. We know as human beings that fathers are involved in the discipline of their children, we humans sometimes abdicate that we should not, but we do know in its base it's an act of love to bring discipline, it's much easier not to, who loves disciplining their children. That's not fun, no discipline is fun for either party. It would be unloving to allow son to grow unchecked in our children, what a privilege to be a father then and to be able to involve yourself in disciplining your children so that you could bring them from one degree of maturity to another. Hebrews told his tinges for they disciplined us, they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them. I couldn't believe it man, time just passes by, just marches on it. I was 22 years old when my dad passed away. He disciplined me for a time as best he saw fit, what seemed best to him. I think he did an okay job, probably a good job, but it was just a short time in my life. It was just from when I was born to when he died and before then already I'd left home anyway. So maybe he had a shot at 17, 18 years and I realized after my father died that I wasn't on earth with a father anymore and I went to the Lord because I was a believer and I said oh God what am I going to do and God said I'm going to be your father, said great because I need that in my life, I need my God my father to watch over me and keep me, keep me in line, keep me in check, keep working on me, keep attacking those things that need to be broken down in my life. God disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. Wow, so my earthly dad probably disciplined me so I would stay out of jail, that was a good reason, no one really wants to be in jail. So your earthly dad probably didn't do a perfect job, maybe he bailed, forgive him. That Bible says every earthly father is to some degree of failure, that's, they only discipline us as best they can and some of them are so hurt themselves that they just don't do a good job and they abdicate for their avoid or they abuse and maybe even beat you up and all that to just keep you out of jail or to keep you from embarrassing them in public, teach you to greet their friends properly so they feel good as a parent. And if all we do with our kids is try to keep them in line so that we look good, that's a tragedy. But God doesn't discipline on that level only, he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness, that means so that we can be in his presence and have him as our father, see him, know him, fellowship with him, enjoy him. So the stakes are much higher and the reward is far greater that we may share in holiness. Look at 2 Corinthians 6 verse 14 to verse 18 quickly, 2 Corinthians 6 verse 14 to 18. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness, what fellowship has light with darkness, what accord has Christ with Belial, that means Jesus and the devil are not brothers, so you can't, mustn't be a woman anymore. Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? There's nothing in common, they have nothing in common in terms of the things that really matter. What agreement has the temple of God with idols? None is the answer. For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, I will be their God and they shall be my people. I've told you many times, that's the covenant refrain, the most repeated phrase in scripture, I will be their God and they will be my people, it's God's plan for us. And look at it, it's not just collective, it's personal and individual, because right after that it says, therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch now and think, then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me. So it's Father's Day and God is saying, I want you to be my, my son, my daughter. I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me. That's individual and personal, it's you sitting right there today, God saying, I want you to be my son and my daughter. And along the way I'm going to discipline you, endure hardship and carry on going because this is how you will get to be holy and then we can be together. One of this has got anything to do with legalism or following rules just to look righteous in God's sight. It's all got to do with the affectionate heart of a father saying, I want you close to me, but I'm perfect, but you have to be perfect like I'm perfect. And he's going to do this, he wants to separate us into his family. Some of us think of sin and God's righteousness and like God just wants to come and separate you know, sinners go there, good people go there and you are a sinner and you know, it's not separating like that, it's separating like this, push that away, come close to me. God's saying, get away from the sin that so easily entangles you and be with me. I'm your father and this hardship you endure to discipline because I'm going to teach you, it's going to train you to leave that junk of the world and come and have me, there can be nothing greater than that. So God wants to separate us into his family. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful says Hebrews 12 verse 11. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful, talk just now a bit about the pain. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. In other words, you can submit to the Lord, subject yourself to him and live where you can resist and rebel and try to fight against his discipline, but when God's come into your life and he has interfered and you've embraced it, you've yielded, you've broken, you've wept, you've repented, you've turned to him, you'll see that all of that he was doing was painful at the time. But later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. In other words, God wants something good to come out of this, therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Don't be wishy-washy, dropping around. Make level paths for your feet. Make decisions that are strong decisions. Level paths, you make level paths for your feet. There's other scriptures that speak about God making a level path press, but this one is about the choices you make, choose righteousness in your life, choose to do what is right, choose not to have sex with someone you're not married to. I put it in those terms because you must understand Christianity's morality is about God's holiness. It's not a dry set of rules, it's a path to life. And so make level paths for your feet so that the land may not be disabled, that's where you would head if you went the other way, you were already crippled by your sin, you would become disabled, but rather healed. What a wonderful goal. In practical terms, God is allowing circumstances to hammer us. He guides us, but he also grows us through hardship, and he also gives us to others. He guides us, he grows us, and then he gives us to others. I'll give you an example of how this evolves in a person's life and different examples. Sometimes the hardship you're going through is not because you have to build more character or not because there's a lack of holiness, sometimes it's just God's guidance. You can look at hardship, and God can steer your life by it. I remember we had a neighbor, just not directly next door to us, but in our compound. And this family had been living in Madagascar for years, and they were content serving God missionaries, it seemed like good folk, they didn't deserve any hardship, really, not obviously anyway. And then suddenly, over a period of months, that neighbor had other neighbors who got these yapping dogs that just yapped incessantly and never stopped yapping, and there was talk of poisoning the dogs, talk of like just hurling them over the fence. They were these little fluffy dogs that are actually half like, you can't really qualify that as a dog, it's like half red half dog. Maybe it was a cotron for Julia. To me a real dog is like a dog, but those, just like, fluffy rag, anyway, those things tormented that person, that they were suddenly, how many were they, five, eleven, eleven dogs all around that person's house, and in the end they were having like mental challenges to live there, because their sleep and their life was so disrupted. You could blame the devil, but all that God wanted to do was get them to realize the season in Madagascar is over, it's time to relocate to another country. And they act up and they relocate it, and you can say that we can, I say it's God. And the dogs within months just disappeared. No one really wanted the dogs, probably not even their owners, but God used those dogs like little demons, and the person moved, and so God can use ways and means to guide us, and in the end it was hard at the time, but when we look back we say God is so faithful, He nearly put me in a psychiatric ward, but actually He just wanted to put me in a different place, and we moved somewhere. I had that attrition from wonderful people on the street of Madagascar who would come to my door when I lived in a normal home, not in a compound, because I was an idealistic guy when I arrived in Madagascar wanting to be with the people. I was not realizing culturally I was miles apart. And they saw a walking dollar sign, they said this guy has got money because he's from outside the country. I had to try and explain I'm South African, I'm not from Europe nor the Northern Hemisphere, I'm from the South of Africa, it's like we're just below the Zimdala. Anyway, constant, constant barrage of people at my gate wanting my help, and I'm thinking but God you've called me to be a pastor of a local church, not a charity on the side of the road. And all my emotional energy was being drained looking after the devil's sheep. I mean that, there were not godly people coming to my gate, there were people in need and I could show compassion and love. They weren't my allies, they weren't my brothers and sisters, and in time that wore me down so I was becoming useless to the church here, preaching worse and worse, probably, I don't know, maybe I was just not very experienced yet. But the point is, I moved into another house eventually because I realized God is actually saying this isn't the right place where you go there, so he can guide us. But there's another way that God does say nutrition in our lives, and that nutrition or that hardship can be very much intended to grow us. And that's when things go wrong, sometimes even more complicated things, like I once left a town to go help plant a church in another city and I met my wife and got married and we wanted to go to the nations and we went to a conference overseas and we'd been serving in the church and I was maybe, I don't know if I was a deacon but I was like a deacon, I was doing everything with like 110% to impress my pastor and I was like really hoping for promotion and I was excited about the adventures I could go on with God and I was like a, oh, why am I on steroids? I was out there in the nations going on short term, mission trips, preaching to people on the East African coast and I was trying to climb the ladder within my local church and then at this conference, God brought someone up and the person called me out and this person said, I've got a picture I want to share with you. God says, the picture there's sand castles on the beach, you've been building these sand castles and God says there's a wave coming and I'm going to wash them away. So I feel like that's a pretty, like okay, it's not totally negative but it sounds a little bit interesting. So I wrote it in my journal. God said he's going to break down the sand castles in my life. I'm thinking like 5% somewhere, God's going to just fix something. Great, cool. It's like when you go to the dentist and you think it's just a filling and they tell you it's not just a root canal, it's a root canal and a crown and a possible extraction and you're going to maybe die. So this is what happened in my life. I wrote that down but it was four years later after we had burnt out, after we had been stepped off leadership, after we had been brought under church discipline because we carried the wrong attitude, after all my illusions about leaders in the church being great people were shattered. And I saw my pastors like the guy who heard me more than anyone and after I had forgiven and after I had come back into the church with the fresh perspective and after I said to Jesus, I will never put a man on a pedestal and I will never treat people that way and I will serve you and I will serve men for your glory but I won't put those men on a pedestal. I had changed. In fact, the kind of leader I would be as a pastor, the kind of way I would relate to people had changed, the kind of way I would relate to serving in the church had changed. All my sand castles had been washed away. I had gone through some of the deepest brokenness that I've ever gone through as a Christian as a journey of faith. To the point that I thought about leaving the church and saying to my wife, let's just go every Sunday and because that is our commitment to God and we made sure we went to church every Sunday but no ambition, no leadership, no more idolatry. Now you should be ambitious. It says those whose desire, eldership desire a noble task in 1 Timothy chapter 3. So there's a need for the church to have leaders but not leaders who view leadership as some kind of pedestal and God had to take the whole idea and destroy it in my life and it hurt. That was his discipline. Complex process that took years, do you realize that God is executing complex processes in your heart that will take years, endure with him, endure as discipline, it's love. It's his love that hurts you so much when things go so badly wrong. It's his love that is actually working in your life sometimes when you're so disappointed in the situation you're in, endure hardship as discipline. Discipline yields a peaceful fruit of righteousness. Where I stand now as a believer is a far more peaceful place with you, with God with myself because of his discipline. The band can come up, remember this, make level paths for your feet so that the lane may not be disabled but rather be healed. God wants to heal us of this world and its cares, he wants to deliver us, he wants to set us free from false ambitions, he wants to disillusion us so that we have no more illusions that would deceive us. Why don't you stand so that the band gets ready to lead us in worship.