THE SURGE
  • SurgeHome
    • Good News
    • I'm New
    • Prayer
    • Community >
      • About Us
    • SurgeOnline
    • Contribute >
      • CoronaVirusRelief
    • Current Series
    • Message Archive
    • Surge Blog

The Surge Blog

my heart overflows with a good theme...
~Psalm 45:1a

National recovery 2, Msg Recap, ~E Reiss

9/22/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Last week we saw that National Recovery starts with “we” and not “they.” Our need to correct things has to start somewhere surprising.  We need to admit that we actually look a whole lot like the political leaders we love to hate.
 
Do you know how many world changing revolutions started with a small group of committed people decided to do things differently? 
 
All of them.
 
So it starts with us – and in keeping with the recovery theme, step 4 of the twelve step program is this:
 
We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

We need to quit rationalizing, to quit blaming, to quit talking about our parents and look in the mirror. Christians believe that when sin came into the world it broke everything. I’m messed up and you are messed up. We could all hold hands with Congress and say we are messed up; we’re broken. And part of our brokenness and part of the human condition make it very difficult to own and to embrace our responsibilities for some of the decisions that we’ve made, especially if somebody else comes along and gives us a good excuse to use and to replay for the rest of our lives.
 
Our current obsession with tolerance isn’t about love, it’s about moral cowardice. I don’t want to face my own sin, or the things I do that are just wrong and I need to own it and work to change it.  But if I adopt a philosophy that says – you do whatever you want, just try not to hurt anyone… then I can have my pet evil and ask you to leave me alone about it.  Maybe I can even lie to myself. 
 
But God has something else to say here. There’s a really important verse of scripture, in the book of Jeremiah.
 
Jeremiah 17:9 -The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
 
The context for this verse is a series of bewildering and ill-conceived uprisings by the Jews against the Empire of Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar.  Those rebellions ended about like you would expect them to, with the Israelites crushed and Jerusalem in flames.  It made no sense.  And, like Israel, our greed and ambition and self-destruction often seem crazy in hindsight.
 
The heart of man is deceitful and it is beyond cure. It is natural for you, it is natural for me, it is instinct for me, it is instinct for you not to do a fearless, moral inventory. It is natural; it is instinctive to me to create a story so I can bypass the truth about me like you bypass the truth about you.
 
The first step to a way out is a fearless moral inventory. How can we be forgiven unless we admit fault? How can we repent of something we’re not honest about in the first place?
 
The good news (literally) is that God did something amazing.  He announced forgiveness in advance. When we understand grace… and know that God will cover us no matter what we’ve done, there’s nothing we can’t bring to Him.  We don’t need to hide with Adam in the garden.  We can be transparent and honest with God and with ourselves, and that starts us on the road to recovery.
 
It’s time to stop hiding… to be fearless in owning our mistakes in transparency before God and honesty with ourselves.  How can we repent from something if we never really own it enough to admit it?  It’s scary to really do this.  But it’s also incredibly liberating.  Real forgiveness and freedom is right on the other side of the door.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Our Writers:

    At The Surge we love doing things together... that includes writing a blog!  Here are a few of our main contributing authors:

    Greg Johnson

    Jesus++
    Me--

    Dwaine Darrah

    Our fearless leader, Dwaine is the lead pastor at The Surge.  His experience in counter terrorism with the CIA prepared him for ministry and he likes dogs and babies even more than E does.

    E

    E (short for Eric Reiss) is the Wingman at The Surge and likes dogs, music, Mexican food, his wife Karen and his little girl Evangeline... not necessarily in that order.

    Archives

    September 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012

    Categories

    All
    Beliefs
    Betrayal
    Buildings
    Caesar
    Career
    College
    Corn Flakes
    Decisions
    Denomination
    Fishing
    Holy
    Hope
    Jesus
    Kids
    Lord’s Supper
    Memorizing
    Missions
    Pan And Echo
    People
    Peter
    Psychology
    Respect
    Rock
    Rome
    Shadows
    Time Discernment

    RSS Feed

Picture

(571) 748-3359

​Small Groups
I'm New
​SurgeOnline
The Surge Community Church
Meeting Sunday Mornings at The State Theatre in Falls Church, 11:10am!
Meeting Sunday Evenings Online with SurgeOnline, 7:00pm!

  • SurgeHome
    • Good News
    • I'm New
    • Prayer
    • Community >
      • About Us
    • SurgeOnline
    • Contribute >
      • CoronaVirusRelief
    • Current Series
    • Message Archive
    • Surge Blog