Leading with a Broken Heart

"Break my heart for what breaks Yours...everything I am for your kingdom's cause."

Today I gave a message using the Incredible Hulk as a backdrop to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly side of anger. We looked at an assumption that many people have and wrestle with - the assumption that God is angry and just looking for a chance to zap someone.
When we read the Old Testament, we do find a God angry, but the anger He feels is most often directed at people who should know better, His people. His anger is the fury of a good Dad whose heart is broken at the mess His kids have made, a God passionate about reclaiming a broken people, broken culture, broken lives, and broken cities.

If God doesn't rage at the mess we've made, He is not God.
If we don't rage at the mess we've made in healthy ways, we are not His people.

I struggle with anger personally, and not the good kind. I can go Hulk with the best of them, though I think in recent years, with the work of the good news deep in my bones, I can see the selfish, petty, small anger give way to something more constructive and centered on God's heart than on my own calloused one.

Being made in the image of God, we see His identity reflected in our own, and a part of that identity as kids made in the image of God is that we get angry about what God gets angry about. We see this perfectly in the life - and anger - of Jesus. Jesus is mad often. Never at the drunks, the demon-possessed, the Romans, the untouchables, the prostitutes...He rages at the religious. In John 2 He goes Hulk over the injustice and religion that oppressed the impoverished seeking forgiveness.  He rages against people who loved business more than helping folks take a step closer to God. Later in John 11 we find Jesus raging at death itself as He confronts Lazarus' tomb and the devastation surrounding the death of His friend. Injustice...religion...death. These are the targets of Jesus' rage.

When you are sent to a city (and everyone is sent to their city) there are things about that city that are broken. That are sick. That are in need of hope and light and peace. We pray for eyes to see the things in us and in our community that break God's heart, the darkness Jesus came to do battle with.  May we battle like Jesus battled, loving and serving, obedient to the point of death, sacrificially, to heal the wounds of the world.

Praying for God to rescue me from a small, destructive anger and show us the hurt in Sioux City that hurts the heart of God, the wounds we are sent to dress and rage against in love. Praying that God might show you the things around you that break His heart.

Would love to have you pray those things with us too. Thanks.

If you want to listen to the message, click here.

WARNING

WARNING:  the following words will ruin your life.  They have a way of starting new things.  They lodge themselves like a splinter in your head...a good splinter if there is such a thing.  They will cause you to take incredible risk to be a part of something bigger than yourself.  They have caused people to move hundreds of miles from everything they've known.  And then back again.  I believe they are words that can change a city.    

What if there were a people passionately in love with God and others who were captivated by the idea that together they could live out the story of Jesus? 

What if they believed that people of hope could change their neighborhoods by empowering the poor, strengthening the broken, embracing the lonely, seeking the lost and challenging the privileged to follow Him? 

What if they had this notion that being an authentic community of believers means that the ideas of compassion, love, and forgiveness, are not just doctrines but a way of life What if they believed in a God of fresh starts and second chances- a God who transforms brokenhearted and wounded people into hope filled Christ followers? 

What if they were us …?

Those words, and that vision, were a huge part of my wife and I packing up our stuff, our lives, saying goodbye to our families, and moving across the country.  We had dreamed of being a part of a community of faith who might take that vision for a place and for people seriously and live it out together.  We had seen glimpses, heard rumors, that such a place might exist...but we had never been a part of one.  

Six years ago we moved from Sioux City, Iowa to Bangor, Pennsylvania.  It was the furthest East I had ever been.  It was like a different planet in many ways, and I said so.  We moved to be a part of Hopesprings, a church that was offering us a place to live in exchange for partnering with them in bringing those words to life in a community.  It was the dumbest, scariest, bravest thing I think we have ever done.  

It was also the best.  

Since then those words, and more importantly the vision they describe for a community of faith, have taken up residence in our minds and hearts and imaginations.  We witnessed the growth of Hopesprings into a community of faith that embodies that vision and is passionate about seeing the Kindgom of God seep into the cracks of a broken and hurting community.  We have been back to Sioux City many times to visit, and in the last few years every time I am in the City of Sioux I see more clearly the need for a place with that kind of vision.  That kind of heartbeat.  That kind of mission.

And so, we are doing another crazy thing.  We are moving to Sioux City, the place where I was born, Summer grew up, where we graduated from West High, where we met, where we married, and where we began our life together, to be that kind of people in a community that desperately needs hope, help, and the love of God seen in the lives of people captivated by a question...

What if they were us...?