{"id":602,"date":"2010-08-08T18:03:37","date_gmt":"2010-08-08T18:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chphministries.wordpress.com\/?p=141"},"modified":"2017-09-01T01:06:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T01:06:18","slug":"get-real-confessions-of-a-local-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/get-real-confessions-of-a-local-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Real! Confessions of a local church."},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently preached a sermon in my hometown of Benton, AR entitled \u201cGet Real!\u201d\u00a0 (The sermon from that morning is available for free download here.\u00a0\u00a0divine-romance.com\/resources<\/a>)\u00a0 In the sermon I basically shared all my \u201cdeepest darkest secrets\u201d about my past and how God taught me to get free of my addictions through the power of public confession.\u00a0 I was really worried about preaching and sharing my testimony to this particular congregation because most of them were in their 40\u2019s, 50\u2019s, and 60\u2019s and had been attending church for decades.\u00a0 I figured the content of my sermon would not be very relevant to people that seemingly “had it all together.\u201d\u00a0 I was wrong.<\/p>\n

Before service started I had attached little yellow sticky notes to the back of all the chairs.\u00a0 At the end of the sermon I invited everyone to fill out the #1 thing that was coming between them and their walk with God.\u00a0 Then I had them bring the sticky notes up to the front and lay them at the foot of the cross as a symbolic gesture that they were committing to do whatever it required to get freedom, including public confession.\u00a0 Here are some of the responses I received.<\/p>\n

A large percentage of the congregation was struggling with:
\nMasturbation
\nPornography
\nSexual immorality<\/p>\n

Others wrote responses like:
\nDishonesty
\nDeceitful lips
\nStealing
\nHatred
\nUnforgiveness
\nGluttony<\/p>\n

And then of course there were the more \u201cchurchy\u201d responses which I had naively expected would be the majority coming from an older \u201cchristianese\u201d crowd.<\/p>\n

Such as:
\nNot reading my Word enough
\nNot making God #1<\/p>\n

However, there were very few of the \u201cchristianese\u201d replies.\u00a0 The majority of the replies dealt with a form of sexual immorality.\u00a0 Namely, masturbation and pornography.\u00a0 This explained to me why God had placed such a push on me to share what I did.<\/p>\n

Everyone is pretending.<\/p>\n

Okay, not everyone.\u00a0 However I never would have guessed that\u00a0response is the one\u00a0that I would have\u00a0received from\u00a0a church where the main demographic is married couples over 40.\u00a0\u00a0I think it is a window into the state of the western church as a whole.\u00a0\u00a0The greatest tragedy is not\u00a0people that have been Christians for most of their lives are still dealing with elementary issues, but it\u2019s the cause of it.<\/p>\n

Secrecy.\u00a0 We’ve turned church into a costume party.<\/p>\n

People have been trained that they have to put their best foot forward, pretending that every thing is under control.\u00a0 They feel like they are a freak for going through what they are going through.\u00a0 They think that they are the only ones, that everyone else has it together and that they are just a \u201cweak link.\u201d\u00a0 They don\u2019t know that everyone else is just pretending too.\u00a0 They\u2019re scared to be found out, scared that they\u2019ll be rejected and ridiculed for being human.\u00a0 They are scared to show their weakness fearing that it will be preyed upon rather than lovingly\u00a0mended.\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 Unfortunately there have been cases where ignorant but well intending people have done just that.\u00a0 Rather than helping a brother in need, instead chose to finish him off with their judgmental and critical attacks and attitudes.<\/p>\n

THIS IS NOT RIGHT!\u00a0 We are supposed to be the hospital where broken people come to be healed.\u00a0 NOT THE JUDGE AND JURY!\u00a0 The church is the very place where people should be running to be mended and nurtured and helped out of their pit.\u00a0 Instead it has become the number one place where people fear to let their true selves be seen.\u00a0 We have to turn that around!\u00a0 We should be attracting the hurting, broken, lonely and scared.\u00a0 We should seek out the hopeless.\u00a0 Not repel them with our self righteous and holier than thou\u00a0attitudes.<\/p>\n

WE START BY BEING REAL OURSELVES!\u00a0 Don\u2019t pretend to be perfect.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve got issues be real about it.\u00a0 This will encourage and help others be the same.\u00a0 It will show them that they are not alone in their fight.\u00a0 We can’t expect to reach people while setting ourselves up on unreachable plateaus based in deceit.\u00a0 We have to be reachable, we have to be real.\u00a0 And that is where we will find the ability to truly\u00a0walk in purity.\u00a0 “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective\u201d (James 5:16)\u00a0 “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy” (Proverbs 28:13)<\/p>\n

It is OUR responsibility to make sure the lost, hurting, and broken feel comfortable coming to us for help. If they are scared to come to us it is OUR fault.\u00a0 And most of them are, because we’ve done a poor job being honest with the world.\u00a0 I know that when I was first coming out with my sin seeking help that I was extremely fearful of rejection.\u00a0 And that is just unfortunate.\u00a0 There should always be a prevailing sense of unconditional love that smothers everything we do.\u00a0 And perfect love casts out fear.<\/p>\n

I encourage all of you to check out this testimony about public confession from Pure Life Revolution. www.pureliferevolution.net\/testimonies-mitchm.html<\/a><\/p>\n

I applaud Church of the Burning Heart\u00a0for their boldness and courage in confessing and taking the steps necessary to rid themselves of everything that would hold them back from Christ.<\/p>\n

Living to touch God’s heart,
\nChris Ulery
\ndivine-romance.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently preached a sermon in my hometown of Benton, AR entitled \u201cGet Real!\u201d\u00a0 (The sermon from that morning is available for free download here.\u00a0\u00a0divine-romance.com\/resources)\u00a0 In the sermon I basically shared all my \u201cdeepest darkest secrets\u201d about my past and how God taught me to get free of my addictions through the power of public […]<\/p>\nRead More Get Real! Confessions of a local church.<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,36,306,1],"tags":[240,14,44,16,34,146,147,148,241,242,17,19,118,119,243,155,11,244,121],"class_list":{"0":"post-602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-blast-archive","8":"category-fire-in-my-bones","9":"category-men-untamed","10":"category-uncategorized","11":"tag-benton","12":"tag-chris-ulery","13":"tag-christopher-ray-ulery","14":"tag-christopher-ulery","15":"tag-church","16":"tag-clean-hands","17":"tag-clean-hands-pure-hearts-ministries","18":"tag-clean-hands-and-pure-hearts-ministries","19":"tag-confession","20":"tag-congregation","21":"tag-god","22":"tag-jesus","23":"tag-lust","24":"tag-masturbation","25":"tag-pornography","26":"tag-pure-hearts","27":"tag-religion","28":"tag-secrets","29":"tag-sex","31":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/masquerade.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p94i1z-9I","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2010,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/2010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine-romance.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}