You Don’t Make A Difference

thank you so much Gabby how necessary and good it is that we learn to pray together in our community pray for one another pray with one another there's actually an entire book of the scriptures devoted to this sort of communal prayer it's called the Psalms 150 prayers of praise and of lament and a pain and of joy and all the bits of the human experience John Calvin famously called it an anatomy of the soul that when you enter into the Psalms you experience the depth of humanity and how humanity relates to God and more than anything you experience the character of God listening drawing near to us so in your own lives as you continue to pray friends I encourage you I dig into the Psalms it's an anatomy of the soul it will speak to your soul and your soul I think will speak through it in a variety of ways morning y'all glad you're here thanks for joining us

Not Allow Sobriety but our time goes to Nokia The All

All All All All community. Theirs was a hidden life, tucked into the green and glorious Schalke Mountains. But an evil had begun to climb and claw its way into their community. A nationalistic fervor, coiled like a serpent around a genocidal and dehumanizing ethic, had slowly slithered from Germany into their hometown. And Franz was dismayed at the response. All of his village's men were called to join this new Nazi regime. And his own Catholic church taught that men's ultimate duty was to the fatherland, to nation, to Hitler, to Nazism. Franz watched as his peers, these men he had prayed and confessed and kneeled with for years, gave themselves to this new and evil power. He wrote in his journal a sobering summation. I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country. In 1941, Franz was drafted, and ordered to take the Hitler oath. And he refused. And thankfully, at that time, he received an exemption because he's a farmer. The soldiers still need to eat. But he was ridiculed, ostracized by his neighbors, the only man in his town, not to take the Hitler oath. And nevertheless, despite this ostracization, he heard reports about the Nazi euthanasia programs. And he said, someone needs to do something. And so he and Franziska traveled to Linz, Austria, to meet with Josephus, who was the Catholic bishop at the time. They were armed with 11 pointed questions for him. He called out the hypocrisy and evil of the church. And after Josephus made them wait for an hour outside of his office, he answered exactly zero of their questions. He only encouraged them to keep their fervor to a minimum, because their job wasn't actually to change anything. Their job was to live a simple, hidden life with their family. Don't rock the boat. And then in February 1943, two years later, Franz was again drafted into active duty. And to object at this point would mean to be a man of the church. And he was a man of the church. And he was a man of the church. He was a man of the church. And he was a man of the church. And he was a man of the church. Every man in his small town had disowned him. The church had deserted the way of Jesus. There was only pain that would await him and his family if he refused. And Franz refused. He was immediately arrested, ripped from his wife and daughters. They had just added a fourth daughter to their family at this point. He was thrown into prison, repeatedly harassed and interrogated. And in one of the encounters he had, it's dramatized in a film about his life, called A Hidden Life. A Nazi officer asks him a piercing question. Do you really think your defiances will change the course of things? Do you really think your defiances will change the course of things? In other words, do you really think your petty life, full of small prayers, a small farm, and a small family, and a small town with small influence, do you really think you have the power to make a dent in anything? Do you really think you make a difference in the world? Friends, the truth is we find ourselves at one point or another in our lives asking ourselves the same question. Do I really think I make a difference in the world? Because we look outside of these walls. We pray about things in here. We know we live in a world that's in desperate need of healing, in desperate need of restoration, and love, and peace. And so often, maybe now more than ever, we feel powerless to actually change anything. It often feels like our lives don't really make a difference because we get another new world. And so often, we feel powerless to change anything. For instance, most Americans feel like their work doesn't make a difference. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 66% of American employees report being disengaged at their work and that their work doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of We are starting to give up on volunteering and civic engagement. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics did a massive study that showed that volunteerism has been on steady, decline over the last few decades and put us at an all-time low in 2023. We have become what journalists and psychologists are now calling slactivists. The 24-hour news cycle and ever-present soundbites of what's going wrong in the world have made us more active in our online resistance and more paralyzed in our actual lives. Because we feel overwhelmed. We feel like what we do is never enough or worthwhile, and so we become people who change a profile picture or post or share or retweet, but then slink back into despair and cynicism. the next news story, the next difficulty that we hear. And so we become people who are passionate in theory, but paralyzed in action. We're slacktivists. There's a psychologist named Martin Seligman who's actually committed himself to studying this dynamic in our culture today. He's come up with a theory to describe this. He calls it learned helplessness. When we become people who are only ever presented with big problems and rarely shown the immediate needs of our immediate community and the practical ways we can show up there, then we eventually stop trying to change anything because none of it matters. We learn helplessness. Or we start to assume that someone else out there who's in real power is responsible for changing things. And so we become people who fill out a ballot, but don't actually do anything about it because it's their responsibility. It's called the bystander effect. Someone else will fix the problem. I can't really fix it. I don't make a difference. And here's the truth, friends. That's a lie. It's a con. The idea that your small actions, your little behaviors don't really make a difference. Isn't actually true. And the data makes this unequivocally clear. Right now, for instance, if every individual American simply recycled 1 tenth of their paper goods, it would save 25 million trees annually. Similarly, if just 10% of our population reduced their plastic intake by 5%, it would remove 4.5 million metric tons of ocean pollution. According to the Corporation for National Community Service, for every person that chooses to volunteer with a church or nonprofit, another 1.3 people on average immediately join them. That means the small choice that you make to step into your community and serve immediately doubles itself. It expands the capacities of our ministries and service in profound way. Small changes in small lives are actually the only things that change the world. There's a great English poet who wrote this. I think he had it right. He said, for the growing good of the world is dependent on unhistoric acts. And that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived a faithfully hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs. Or as Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, puts it, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.

Franz was scheduled to be executed for his noncompliance in 1943. He was continually pressured along the way, told by both the Nazis and his church visitors to his prison cell that all his prayer and all his faithfulness and all his writing in prison wouldn't change anything. Still, he refused. A lowly farmer, a solitary man, a simple father, he still wrote that it would be better for his daughters to see him as a martyr for Christ than a compatriot with the Nazis. And on his way to the guillotine, they presented him with another document, another paper that he could sign to save his life. He refused. And he was beheaded on August 9, 1943. His final recorded words were simple. I am completely bound in inner you.

I deserve to be the death of all things in this world. But of course, trust me, I will never be a martyr. I will be a martyr amongst all of theitarian clans. I'm not the only one. Once I was born, there was another death. The death of my mother and my children. We all mourn the death of our sisters. We all mourn our children. And to be that war, I'm not moving forward. I'm now living the life of the world. I'm living the life I was born. I'm living the life of the world. I'm living the life of the world. I own the world. about his life shown to millions, and he never knew any of that would happen. He never saw any of that. He never knew the ways his prayers would radiate beyond his life. He never knew the ways his suffering would inspire and uplift and transform millions. He never knew that in this little place on a Sunday morning halfway across the world, his story could be told as a reminder to us today. Friends, Franz whispers to us from heaven. He says, don't believe the con. The truth is that our small hidden lives full of small prayers are the only things that do make a difference. He says, remember your Christ from a small town with no political or social clout, whose best friends were marginalized day laborers and outcasts with little money and influence. And those people changed the course of history. What you do, the way you live, how you pray makes an eternal difference. Over the last few weeks here at Midtown, we've been in a series we're calling The Great Con, and we're going through the book of James together. We're calling it The Great Con because each week we're looking at a different lie or con that our culture hands us or tells us to believe about ourselves or God or the world. And we're looking at the way that James responds to those lies. He's saying, no, guys, you're missing it. That's not wisdom. It's not what it means to be human. That's not who you are or who God is or what the world is. And this week, we actually arrived to James's final words in his letter. Over and over, if you've been with us throughout this series, we've seen that James has emphasized how practical Christ following is. How becoming a disciple of Jesus makes a real difference. And that's actually been the whole point of the book. It's a reminder that faith is only faith when it moves to the world in love. And now he's wrapping up that book. He wants to leave the church with some final words on how exactly they can become agents of change in the world. What are the most essential tasks we need to know if we want to make a difference? How do we defiantly stand in the face of the world that says you don't make a difference and proclaim a different truth? And James answers those questions, maybe somewhat surprisingly, with three things. Three things that he gives us to do. Prayer, penance, and pursuit. Prayer, penance, and pursuit. A nice pastoral alliteration for you. Friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me. To the book of James. This is near the backs of your Bibles, if you're flipping there. We're going to be in James chapter 5, so the very end of the book. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, that's okay. The words are going to be behind me on the screen, so you can follow along there. James 5, starting in verse 13, we'll read to the end of the book in verse 20.

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who's committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is the prayer of the righteous. The prayer of the righteous is a powerful and effective thing. Elijah, he was a human being just like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months, it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest. My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner's soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I can only speak for myself, but for me, as we've gone through James, I've been hyped about how action-focused he is, because I'm an Enneagram 3 achiever. I get stuff done. I want to get in the game, and so when I hear faith without works is dead, I'm like, amen, right? Do not be hearers of the word, but doers. Yes. Don't show favoritism. Uh-huh. Do not slander one another. Come on, coach. Yes. Put me in the game. That's what I keep thinking. When I read James, and I want him to finish his letter with another crescendo of action, something to do, and he says, pray. Pray. Okay, yeah, James, no, I get it. Prayer, it's important. Back with God, all those things, but really, what am I supposed to do, right? How do I make a difference in things? James is like, oh, you want to make a difference. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Pray. Are you going through pain and hardship and loss and grief? Pray. Is life full of joy and wonder and celebration? Pray. What praises? Are people among you sick? Pray. Anoint with oil and pray. Prayer really changes things, he says. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful and effective, and to be honest, I don't think that I'm the only person in the room that kind of feels like that can be a letdown, because for most of us, prayer feels like the opposite of making a difference. We often see prayer as a sort of spiritual stamp we put on our behavior. So we pray before something, we pray after something, but it's always really about getting what we, to what we do. Or we see prayer as unproductive. We get to the end of a prayer and we look around and we're like, nothing really changed. And so the result is that we become disenchanted with prayer. We sideline it in our lives because it doesn't get us the results we're looking for on the timeline we're wanting them to come. It doesn't seem to do anything. Sorry, James, you're wrong.

And there's just one pesky rebuttal to our own sidelining of prayer, just one minor biblical character that keeps coming up as a rebuttal. Jesus, is his name? Minor character. Mark, 1.35. In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place and there he prayed. Luke 3.21. Now, when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also was baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened. Luke 5.16. Meanwhile, Jesus would slip away to deserted places and pray. Luke 6.12. Now, during those days, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray and he spent the night in prayer to God. Luke 9.18. Once, when Jesus was praying alone with only the disciples near him, he asked them, who did the crowd say that I am? Luke 9.18. Once, when Jesus was praying alone with only the disciples near him, he asked them, who did the crowd say that I am? Luke 9.28-29. Now, about eight days after these sayings, Jesus took Peter and John and James and went up to the mountain to pray. And while Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed. Matthew 14.23. And after Jesus had dismissed the crowds, he went up to the mountain by himself to pray. Matthew 19.13. The children were being brought to him in order that he might lay hands on them and pray. John 11.41. Jesus looked upward and prayed. Luke 22.31. Simon, Simon, listen. Satan has demanded to sift you all like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. Matthew 26.26. While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread and after praying and blessing, he broke it. He gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body. Matthew 26.36. Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and he said with them, sit here while I go over there and pray. Luke 23.34. Jesus prayed, Father, forgive them that they know not what they do. Luke 23.46. Then Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, prayed, Father, in your hands I commend my spirit. Luke 24.50. Following his resurrection, Jesus led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he prayed a blessing over them. Anyone noticing a trend?

Yeah? Jesus prayed. Tobin is dialed in on the sermon, people. Jesus prayed over them. A lot. It was the center point of his life with God. You can't read the gospel biographies of Jesus' life without noticing how foundational it was to him. It was part of his morning routine. It was part of his regular rhythm. He made time for it even when things were busy. Now, another follow-up question for you. Did Jesus make a difference in the world?

Yes, church. The answer is yes. Did Jesus have a life that radically healed and changed and shaped the people around him? Absolutely, yes. And that life was constantly changing. Praying. So what if, and just hear me out, I know it sounds crazy, what if prayer is not just some peripheral religious appetizer to the more important entree of doing? What if prayer was precisely what made Jesus' life matter? What if prayer is precisely what makes a difference in things? James seems to think so. He seems to think that prayer has an incredible power to change things. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Prayer has real power. In the world. There's a famous minister named John who wrote about this way back in the fourth century. He was nicknamed John Chrysostom, which means John the Golden Mouthed, which is just amazing. He was an amazing preacher. We need to do better at nicknames, by the way, in our culture. Golden Mouthed, that's amazing. John, he reviewed the scriptures because he saw what the scriptures said about prayer and he looked through all of the things that prayer did in the scriptures. This is how he put it in his sermon. The potency of prayer has subdued the strength of fire. It has bridled the rage of lions, hushed anarchy to rest, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, expanded the fates of heaven, assuaged diseases, dispelled frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. There is in prayer an all-sufficient splendor, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds. A heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings. Prayer changes things. And because it changes things, James uses a particular situation in which we should become people who pray often, when someone is in need of healing. He says that the elders of the church should do two things for those who are sick. Pray for them and anoint them with oil. And by the way, the elders of the church in a biblical sense, that just means they're representatives of the church. Everyone should be doing this. The elders of the church in particular, when somebody is sick, they're going to pray for them. The elders of the church in particular, when somebody is sick, at home, are kind of assigned the role of doing this. Everyone should be praying. Elders get a specific role. And two things they do. Pray, anoint with oil. What he's essentially telling us to do is that an essential part of making a difference in the world means interceding on behalf of others. Intercession. That's a fancy word that we don't use too often in our culture. But biblically, put simply, it just means to pray on behalf of others for their needs and well-being. It is the intentional focus of our human will and effort to prioritize the health and life of our neighbor. It is a primary focus of our human will and effort to prioritize the health and life of our neighbor. It is a primary way that we live out loving our neighbors ourselves. There's a scholar named Richard Foster who puts it this way. He said, if we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than is within our power to give them. And that will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others. It is selfless prayer, even self-giving prayer. It is the ongoing work of the kingdom. Nothing is more important than intercession. And that makes sense in theory for many of us, but then in practice, it makes sense in reality. It gets a little challenging because most of us don't know where to start. There's so much to pray for in the world, and so we pray for wars or famines or whatever else, and then we're kind of like, well, we covered our bases. Others of us have prayed extensively for someone with sickness only to see them ultimately lose their battle. I'm included on that list. And so making sense of intercession and implementing it, it's not an easy thing. And so there are a couple of things that James reminds us of. I want us to see what James is saying, what intercession really looks like and what it doesn't look like. First, in verse 15, he says that these prayers are the only things that we can pray for. These prayers are the only things that we can pray for. These prayers need to be prayers of faith, which sounds really religious-y, like prayers of faith. Cool. I don't really get what that means in English, right? And I was reading some Greek scholars this week. I'm not a major Greek scholar, but I was reading some scholars, and they point out that the word he uses here is a unique word for prayer in the New Testament. It's very different than other words for prayer. And the reality is that Christians have kind of taken this and made it what they've wanted in some unhelpful ways throughout history when they talk about a prayer of faith. So for instance, some people like to think that a prayer of faith means a prayer of absolute certainty. means working yourself in a sort of a spiritual fervency and certainty. No doubts can exist. There are people with ministries of healing who do this. They go in to someone who's sick, and they say, look, we're going to excitedly pray, and you need to remove any doubt in your head. Your faith, if you have enough faith and remove all doubt, will heal you. And that is a terrible thing, friends. Your own willpower to have faith isn't what heals. It's Christ that heals. And all over the Bible, there are people with incredible faith who aren't healed and are actually commended for their prayers of faith, and they're actually praying for their prayers of faith even when they don't get healed. Take Job. He suffered and was sick for years, and it had nothing to do with his lack of faith. In fact, he showed incredible faith through lament, through allegiance to God even when things got hard. And he's commended by God at the end of his life. And his friends who told him that he was sick because he had a lack of faith, they actually get scolded by God at the end. Paul, in the New Testament, prays numerous times in 2 Corinthians for a physical malady to be removed, and it wasn't. It's not because Paul didn't have faith. It's In Mark 9, Jesus interacts with a man who is conflicted in his faith, who longs for healing for his son, and the man says, I believe you can heal. Help my unbelief. And Jesus still heals his son. He doesn't stand back and say, well, once you've removed that unbelief, once your faith is perfect, then, no. He hears the man say, I have little faith. I need more. Help me. And Jesus says, that is faith. That's what faith looks like. So a prayer of faith is not absolute certainty. Don't let anyone tell you that that's what what a prayer of faith is. Secondly, a prayer of faith doesn't mean going into command mode. This is another thing that a lot of ministries of prayer and healing will emphasize. They talk about how they go in and they actually don't speak with God. They speak to the disease or to the person. It's a common spiritual thing in our culture. So I rebuke this disease. Get out of this person. That's not a prayer of faith to God. That's not praying to God at all. It's taking on to ourselves what God alone can do. There are all sorts of spiritual swindlers in our culture today that say they themselves have specific power through their words to bring healing. They draw thousands of people to stadiums. Most of the time it's dangerous and a sham. So the prayer of faith, it's not going into command mode. It's not removing all doubts. It simply means specifically requesting before God something that is in alignment with his kingdom. Aligning our hearts with the heart of God and pleading for that healing power to come into our lives here and now. That's what intercession means. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And if you ever want to know what that healing looks like, go ahead and read through the gospels. Look what Jesus did. He said his primary task was bringing the kingdom. Here's what he did. Sight for the blind. Legs for the lame. Streams in the desert. Healing our ecology. Comfort for the mourners. Justice for the marginalized. Toppling of oppressive empires. Forgiveness for our brokenness. Every tear of grief wiped from our eyes. Those are the things we pray for, friends. In our Christian life, we need to remember this about our Christian life. It is standing in an in-between space. We are constantly standing with one foot in the world that is broken and decaying. With a world that is not as it should be. But we're also standing with another foot in the world that God is bringing. In the kingdom of heaven that is even now coming into this world. And so when we pray, we are straddling that line. And we are saying, God, in this liminal space, bring healing. Of course we have uncertainty. Of course we have doubt. Of course we have grief. Of course Of course we wonder how you'll do it, but we come to you with all of it. We ask you to bring healing, the source of life, to bring life. It's not a formula. It's a trust, and that trust, by the way, whether it happens now or in the future, is something that God will respond to. It may not happen on our timeline, it may happen at the end of things, but we know that healing will come. We always need to keep that in mind, friends, when we see headlines, when it feels like nothing we're doing makes a difference, like our prayers don't matter. Remember the truth of the gospel, that we pray to a God who will make all suffering, all human contradiction and absurdity vanish like a pitiful mirage, a God who in the world's finale at the moment of eternal harmony will make something so precious come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the atonement of all crimes, for all fallen tears. That's the gospel, that's the God we pray to. Throughout history, Christians have had this Aramaic phrase that they've prayed, Maranatha. It means Jesus come quickly, Jesus come tonight, Jesus come and heal, we need you to, we need you to. That's the prayer of faith. So when people need healing in our culture, we do that. But James also says we anoint with oil, which is interesting, right? This was actually a loaded practice in James' context. Anointing with oil served a couple different purposes. First, oil for Christians had this pastoral and symbolic meaning. It was used to help stimulate the faith of the one being anointed. So you'd go in, somebody's sick, you'd place oil on their forehead or their nose, and then it would be around them. It was a sign of God's presence to them at all times. So it would fill their nostrils as they fell asleep and as they woke. It would be a reminder that God is near to them. Whatever happens, God is near to them. But second thing that oil was in the ancient world was medicine. You guys remember the Samaritan parable? Those of you that have heard the story in Luke, Jesus tells the story of a man who sees another dying man on the roadside. What did the man did to help the dying man? He poured oil and wine on him. He wasn't making him a salad.

It's not what he was up to. Oil and wine meant something different in the ancient world. Wine was an antiseptic. Oil was a medicinal treatment. It soothed the body and softened the wounds. There's an ancient Greek physician named Galen who actually wrote all about this. He had a book that he wrote on the powers of simple medicine. He talked about how oil could be used from everything to healing toothaches to paralysis. He said that oil is the best medicine and the best of all remedies for paralysis. So what we need to see here is that James certainly says prayer is essential. Prayer also is not a replacement for medical treatment. Prayer and medical treatment supplement one another. And so when we approach God longing for healing, we say, God, if you wanna heal without the help of medical arts, please do. We know you can. We know you have that power. But we also know that you've given humans the incredible capacity to use resources to bring healing. And so we would pray that if you're gonna heal through medical intervention, do it. We know that your miracles can come as much through medicine as without them. And we pray that because we love people. We pray that because we wanna see them healed. Medicine, friends, produces miracles all over our world. Medical professionals in the room, your role is in direct partnership with God. Pray alongside your work. Pray God would use whatever means necessary to bring healing. So that's how prayer makes a difference in the world, friends. We pray with fervency and hope and we pursue the best possible medical care. But that's not the only thing that James says. He also gives us the practice of penance or confession. In verse 15 through 16, he says, anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another so that you may be healed. Confess. And what James is saying here is that we need to make sure that alongside any physical therapy we're doing with people, they also need spiritual and emotional therapy. It's crucially important. He's saying that when a person is seeking physical healing, they also need to do a heart check. They need to ensure that they're willing to give and that their relationship with God and relationships with others are in the right place. And this isn't just some religious add-on. That's crucially important for us to remember here. James is actually giving us a necessary insight into our human condition. He's saying that we are all spiritual and emotional beings as much as we are physical beings. And oftentimes, our spiritual and emotional health is directly tied to our physical health. And to be clear on this, the Bible does not say that sickness is always because of sin. Jesus actually refutes that idea. In John chapter nine, he heals a man born blind and he says to everyone that sin is not the reason he was born blind. But at the same time, there are instances in the gospels where Jesus says that actually the inner condition is a contributing factor to the outer condition. Mark two, he says to a paralyzed man, son, your sins are forgiven. And then the man walks. He's saying that there's something internally that needs to change that is contributing to your physical ailment. And actually, this isn't a crazy thing. Medical professionals see this all the time. They know that spiritual and emotional issues, issues of anger or shame, trauma or anxiety or fear, those things are always undermining physical health. There's a doctor I was reading about this week who was writing about psychosomatic illness. If you haven't heard of psychosomatic illness, most people in our culture think that psychosomatic illness is something that people make up in their brain. So they think they're sick and then they start to feel sick, but it's all psychological. Most of us think that that happens. But what he says is psychosomatic illness actually is in the body. It's not something that's just made up, but it is caused by something deeper. He says that when you have anxiety, it causes real migraines. When you have fear, it causes real ulcers. When you have anger, it causes real colitis. Your body really breaks down because of your inner condition. Psychosomatic illness is an illness that is aggravated by and sometimes entirely caused by spiritual and emotional issues. And what we find in the data, it's remarkable, when confession and forgiveness are the same, when forgiveness are practiced, it really does bring healing to our bodies. There's a psychologist named Fred Luskin who did extensive research on this. He wrote a book called Forgive for Good, A Proven Prescription for Health. He said this, in careful scientific studies, forgiveness has been shown to reduce depression, increase hopefulness, decrease anger, improve spiritual connection and increase self-confidence. And not only that, in his research, he found that failing to confess and forgive, harboring inner resentment, not experiencing forgiveness from others or from God, it leads to an increased risk for heart disease and heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke. Not confessing and forgiving and isolating oneself has the same detrimental effects, according to the research, as smoking for the entirety of your life. It destroys your body. But when we practice forgiveness and confession, risk of those ailments plummet. Physical healing and health comes from spiritual and emotional healing and health. And the Bible says, the Bible actually has a really robust explanation for why this happens. The Bible teaches us that there is a spiritual and emotional barrier between us and God and us and one another. And Christ says that he came to abolish that barrier. And that in practicing confession and receiving forgiveness from him and others, dividing walls are torn down. That's why the heart of the gospel at the very beginning, when Jesus comes, he says, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent. Confess and receive forgiveness, turn back to God. It will bring utter freedom in your life and in your body. So the truth is, if we want to make a real difference in the world and bringing healing to people, there is no better place to start than confession and forgiveness. There's nothing better for us. To get right with God, to get right with one another, that solves a myriad of physical ailments. And when we do that well, it changes the world. It brings healing to who we are, and it brings healing out from us into the world. Prayer and penance, prayer and confession. Finally, friends, the third thing that James gives us, the thing he leaves us with here at the end. Pursuit. Verses 19 through 20, my brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner's soul from death, will cover a multitude of sins. James' final invocation to us is that we need to turn our lives outward. To those who, for one reason or another, have chosen to reject Jesus or turn away from Jesus. If you want to make a real difference in the world, it starts with having eyes of love. Love for every person with whom you interact. And friends, we live in a time where these words couldn't be more pertinent. Millions of people are walking away from the church and from Christ today. More people have left the church in the last 25 years than people who came into the church during the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham revivals combined.

And there are lots of reasons for this, but one of the primary reasons, study after study shows, is that many people have not found that people in the church exhibit Christ to them in a meaningful way. David Kinnaman wrote a book on this. It's called Un-Christian. His research found that there are three main words that non-Christians use to describe Christians. Anyone want to guess what those words might be?

Hypocritical, judgmental, old-fashioned. Those three words are the primary words that people outside of this room think about us, about Christians. Friends, people have walked away from Jesus, not because of Jesus, but because of an encounter they've had where Christians failed to proclaim Jesus meaningfully. Brennan Manning put it this way, brilliantly. He said, the greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny him with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

And as tragic as that is, we need to remember James' word here, that the pathway back runs through us. We are the body of Christ. Christ has no body now but yours in the world. So we need to become people who pursue, we need to become people who live and speak radical hospitality in a culture of suspicion and mistrust, people who live and speak truth and sincerity in a world of spin and deception, people who live and speak sacrificial love in a world of self-obsession, people who live and speak grace in a culture that wants to cancel and inflict vengeance, who live and speak humility in a culture of raising up myself.

Our speech and our lives, we're so saturated with Christ that people outside this room gotta say, there's something to this, because their life is so committed, so compelling, so filled with joy and peace and love that I need to know more. And I'll speak for myself. This is my purpose and calling, friends. There is nothing else that I wanna give my life to more than this. There is nothing else that has this much of a difference in people's lives. It's eternal difference, eternal life from now and into eternity. And from the day this church was planted, this has been a central goal of ours, to become a home for the spiritually homeless, to be a refuge for those who are burned out by religion, to be a safe space to wonder and to question, to be a place for the wanderer to find rest and peace and life. And when I look around this room, I see story after story after story of people who have experienced that in this place. I see in all of your eyes healed wounds. I see forgiveness and freedom. I see profound joy and a new attachment of love to one another and to Christ. I see deepened thought and feeling. I see transformation. And all of that happened because each of you was pursued. All of that happened because someone here loved you. Someone here asked you good questions. Someone here ate meals with you. Someone here prayed with you. Someone here grieved with you. Someone here invited you.

Pursuit is how we make a difference in people's lives, because that's how Christ made a difference. The story of this text is a story of a pursuing God. From the outset, this is a God who moves towards us in love. We pursue because we know that pursuing God. He's drawn near to us. He's cried and shouted with joy, even when we haven't noticed him. With arms outstretched, he's run to us like a father, embracing his beloved. With arms outstretched, arms that were just like ours, he was splayed out on a cross so that death might not win. He rose so that death might not win. He rose so that death might not win. He rose so that we might have real lasting life. Those arms embrace us, friends. Pursue us. That's why we pursue.

So let those arms pursue you and embrace you again today. And in response, pray. Practice penance. Pursue. The promise is clear. Healing will come. That's how we make a difference in the world. Let's pray, friends.