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Show and Tell
The two texts that Kendy just read tell us two things that I believe we have to do to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in being set free. In my job I’ve seen a lot of people set free from a lot of things, but I have never seen anyone set free without having done these two things. These two things we have got to do. I’m going to call them Show, and Tell.

Let’s start with the first one. In order for Jesus to set us free we need to show our bondage to someone else. The Biblical word for that is “confession” and we did a little bit of that here.

First we need to confess our sins to God, to be sure, but the Bible also says, confess our sins to one another. We need someone else in this with us. If you look through the passage that Kendy read in James, it lists a lot of different kinds of bondage. It talks about trouble, which could be just about anything. It talks about sickness, and the Greek word there for sickness could mean physical, emotional, or spiritual sickness. It talks about sin. We might use the word addictions. The passage lists a lot of different kinds of bondage, but the prescription is always the same: show it to someone else, let someone else in on what you’re going through.

For instance, it says, if your bondage is illness, get some people praying for you, because the prayers of Godly people can have a big effect. Now, I know that instantly raises the question, “Well, what if we pray and nothing happens?” Don’t worry about it. Healing is on God’s job description, not on ours. Our job is to pray. Remember, when it comes to faith, we’re in Sales, not Management. Let God decide about the healing, because even when there’s no miraculous cure, God still delivers from bondage.

Several families I’m close to in the church have some really serious health issues right now, cancer, brain surgeries, some tough stuff. A lot of people have prayed, and there’s been no miraculous cure, yet. But all of these people have said to me, “You know what, we feel God’s power with us, we feel God supporting us in some ways more than we ever have before.” They’ve all said, “How do people get through something like this without praying?”
The prayers are obviously doing something: they are making God more real, and that is freeing them from the bondage of fear. Besides, sometimes God does do the miraculous. A couple years ago here there was a woman who had cancer, our elders prayed for her, and she was cured beyond anyone’s expectations. A miraculous cure right here at FPCB. There’s a Presbyterian pastor I know who one day was praying for a woman in the hospital who had been in a coma for several months. As she was praying, the woman’s vital signs suddenly shot up. The woman started to move around, and the nurses rushed in to see what was going on. My friend said she’s never experienced the power of God so dramatically before. I’d like to tell you how that story ends but I don’t know because my friend got so freaked out by it that she left the room and never came back. You can hardly blame her. She was Presbyterian, that wasn’t supposed to happen. The Spirit was supposed to work, but in an orderly way.

If your bondage is a health problem, let some folks in on it so that they can pray. It’s the same with any kind of bondage. We cannot get out of it alone. We need to let others in on it, especially if your bondage is an addiction or some kind of repetitive sin. You’ve got to confess it, to God to be sure, but to at least one other person. I know I’ve preached this point hundreds of times before, that we need to take off the masks, we need to be real to each other, and I do that because part of the pastor’s job is to nag for Jesus. It’s on my job description, nag for Jesus, in order to get you to do what you don’t want to do, so that you can become who you want to become. There is no way to break free from bondage without letting someone else in on it.

Why won’t God just heal us in secret? Because relationship is God’s top priority, and he wants to heal us in relationship with him, but also in relationship with each other. You don’t have to tell everybody your bondage, just somebody. It’s best if it’s a close Christian friend, but if you don’t want to do that, a Pastor will do in a pinch. It’s sort of like a spare tire, you’re going to want to change it as fast as you can, but it’ll get you going. And sometimes we may need to seek professional assistance when we need it. The bottom line is: we’ve got to tell someone else.

There is a spiritual power released when we confess. For one thing, it takes away the “if they only knew” syndrome, because now someone does know, and you’re still loved. Plus, you get people to help you, pray for you, support you, hold you accountable, encourage you. On top of all that, we realize that we are not alone. Sometimes people will come into my office to confess some secret and they’ll say, “I’ll bet you’ve never heard this one before.” I’ll say, “Uh huh, try me.” I don’t want to hurt our feelings, but we’re not nearly as creative in our sinning as we think we are. For all the theological talk about original sin, I’ve never seen one yet. They’ve all been done before.

Or sometimes people will say, “I bet I’m the only person in the church that deals with this.” And I’ll think, “Mmmm, except for about fifty other people, some of whom are sitting around you in church right now.” I mean, just look at us. We’re a mess. I’ve got stuff, you’ve got stuff, all God’s children got stuff, but if we take it to God, and at least one other person, Jesus will set us free from our bondage.

The second thing we need to do to cooperate with Jesus in breaking free is to tell the thoughts and feelings that lead to bondage to be quiet. The second passage we read today out of Corinthians says to take every thought captive. That is a great phrase: take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. Because a lot of our bondage, especially bad habits, addictions, repetitive sin, attitudes, a lot of that bondage begins with a thought. The bondage of fear, for instance, begins with the thought, “what if this happens?” The bondage of lust begins with the thought, “Well, look at that.” The bondage of a broken relationship begins with the thought, “Why, you so and so.” The bondage of out of control spending begins with the thought, “I’ve got to have it.” All of those thoughts lead to bondage. The fear just makes us worried and anxious all the time. Unhealthy sexual thoughts rob us of the intimacy that can be found only in marriage where people fully know and fully love each other. The angry thoughts consume us with rage. The out of control spending builds a prison of debt. Those thoughts lead to bondage.

The problem is that our culture puts those thoughts into our heads all the time, doesn’t it? My mind has soaked up so many messages from TV, movies, and advertising. I’ve got tons of useless stuff in my head. For instance, which US President got stuck in the White House bath tub? Taft. I have a finite number of brain cells, and I resent that some of them are taken up with that visual in my mind. And now it’s in yours. Then there’s the theme songs from television shows, The Brady Bunch, Friends, Cheers, taking up even more brain cells. In college I read some of the greatest works of literature ever. Gone. Faded away. But “hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us,” is right there at my command. Our minds are filled with a world view that is just that: the world’s view. Not God’s view. It leads to bondage.

But if we take those thoughts captive, before they go too far, and tell them to be obedient in the name of Jesus, we break free. So, for instance, the world says, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Jesus says, “That will eat you alive with rage like acid on your soul. Forgive your enemies so that you can live in peace instead.” The world says, “Be afraid. Look at the stock market. Look at all the crime. Never mind that crime has dropped 30%, we’re going to find the few criminals that are left, and we’re going to show them to you 24/7/52, because it’s good for ratings. Be afraid. Be very afraid!” Jesus says, “Fear not, for I am with you, and I have summoned you by name.” If we take every thought captive, and replace them with the thoughts of Christ, we’ll be set free from our bondage.

How do we get Jesus’ thinking into our heads? First thing you’ve got to do is ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you. That’s the most important step. Then, we need to know the Bible, because that’s where God records his thinking.

The bottom line here is that there is power in the name of Jesus, which means that we do not have to be passive in our bondage. We can wage war against the thoughts and the feelings that lead to bondage, and we can win. I love the macho language in that Corinthians passage: “Our weapons have divine power to demolish strongholds.” I just love that. This summer I was doing some volunteer work at a house, and part of it was to take a sledge hammer and tear down these walls that had been infected with mold. It was so much fun, bashing those walls in. In my job, there’s not always a lot of tangible, visible results. I can never really point and say, “Look, my congregation is 100% sanctified.” So tearing down a wall, that was cool, I could see that. I felt like a man – I destroyed something! When we have thoughts and feelings that lead to bondage we can destroy them in the name of Christ. We can take them captive.

Let me illustrate. One of my bondages is that I am a chronic insomniac, and have been my whole life. Almost anything keeps me awake. Someone sneezes in Ballard and I’m up for hours. A lot of that is because I often cannot get my mind to shut off, but sometimes it’s because of worry. There’s a lot of sin behind that worry. A lot of “me, me, me” going on. One of the ways God is freeing me from that is the Show and Tell method. I’ve shown that bondage to others, I’ve confessed the sin that comes behind that worry. They pray for me, and that’s very helpful. But I’ve also started to take those thoughts captive and tell them what to do. So I’ll say, “Worry? You’re the Devil trying to steal my joy. So in the name of Jesus, I cast you to the foot of the cross. I declare you null and void. Jesus conquered death, which means he can beat the Devil too, so I don’t have to be afraid of anything. So, worry? Let me sum this up for you in three simple words that even you can understand. Go. To. Hell. Goodnight.” And then I pray, and that always gets me to sleep way quicker than if I’d just worried myself into exhaustion.

Lust? Take that thought captive, and tell it what to do. Say, “Devil? You are trying to make me step on dollars to pick up pennies, and I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to fall for your schemes. I will settle for nothing less than the joy of intimacy that comes only in marriage, where I can be fully known, and fully loved.” Anger? Take that thought captive before it becomes a bondage to you. Say, “Yes, this person hurt me, and yes I’m angry. But God, you are bigger than my anger, you are bigger than the hurt. You love that person too. Help me to see them the way you see them.”

Luther put it this way: “You can’t stop a bird from flying around your head, but you can keep it from making a nest in your hair.” Think about it, it will make sense in a minute. In other words, you can take those thoughts captive, tell them what to do, and defeat them before they defeat you. You can stop the thought-feeling-action train before it ever gets out of the station.

Only Jesus can free us, but we cooperate with him when we show our bondage to someone else, and tell our thoughts and feelings that lead to bondage to shut up. You don’t even need to be polite about it. Without those two, I’m not sure that we can fully be set free. And you need both. Some of us are real good at the showing part, the confessing part, but we aren’t good at the taking thoughts captive part, so we kind of wallow in them, or vice versa. You need both.

When I did college ministry there was a young man who attended my college group who was in bondage to a whole lot of stuff. He was so insecure he could hardly talk to anybody. He also seemed to be carrying a huge load of guilt, because he’d say things like, “Man, if people knew who I really am, they wouldn’t want me around.” One day he finally told me his whole story. It turned out his dad had said to him repeatedly, “You are a disappointment as a son.” Then his parents split up. Then as a teenager he ran away from home, got involved in the rave scene, which included a whole lot of drugs and stuff like that.

Eventually he came back home. But six months after he got back his mom attempted suicide and nearly succeeded. So when he went to visit her in the hospital, the very first thing she said to him was, “You just need to know that the reason I tried to kill myself was because you ran away.” How’s that for some bondage? Then, on top of all of that, he had a sexual addiction that left him feeling dirty and completely unlovable.

When he was done telling me all of this I said, “Jack, I thought you were a great guy before, and I still think you’re a great guy, and that took a ton of guts to tell me all of that. I want you to know that this doesn’t define you, and I believe that Jesus wants to set you free. So let’s start at the beginning, your mom’s attempted suicide? Jack, it was not your fault.” He said, “Well, she said it was. She said it was my fault.” I said, “Jack, it wasn’t your fault.” I just said it over and over again, “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.” If you have seen a movie called Good Will Hunting there’s a scene in there where Robin Williams plays a psychiatrist who says over and over again to the Matt Damon character, “It’s not your fault; it’s not your fault” about his parent’s divorce. When I saw that movie I had some very judgmental comments about how poorly written that scene was, but there I was, repeating it verbatim. God’s little irony. I just kept saying, over and over again, “Jack, it is not your fault. It is not your fault.”

Finally he started to cry. He said, “Maybe not, but the drugs, the sexual stuff.” I said, “Well, yeah, that is your fault. But you know what, Jesus can free you from that, and I’m not going anywhere and neither will your friends.” He didn’t believe me. But then, over the course of the next three years Jesus set him free. He joined a small group and made some great friends and was able to open up and confess to them his various bondages. Month by month he got a little more confident. You could see him standing taller and taller. He talked to more people. Eventually he even got enough confidence to start asking women out on dates. At the same time he hadn’t been able to get into a four year college because his high school grades were so low. So he went to Community College and worked really hard and got his grades up. Then he decided to go be a missionary to the wildest, most unchurched part of the world, UC Berkley, and I forgave him. But there was still this sexual addiction thing.

So one spring he took a camping trip with his good friends to the Grand Canyon. Late one night he got out of his tent, and he went to the canyon’s edge. He started to pray. He prayed for two or three hours. He said that he could feel God physically present. He felt like he was being hugged by God. So at the end of that two or three hours he took a rock. He imagined that that rock was his sexual addiction. He said, “Jesus, I give this to you.” Then he threw it into the Grand Canyon as hard as he could. Later he told me, “Scott, I must have thrown it like 90 mph. I could pitch in professional baseball. It was a good throw.” From then on, whenever he was tempted to that sexual addiction, he took that thought captive, and told it what to do. He’d remember that feeling of being hugged, he’d remember that rock, he remembered that prayer, and he was usually able to avoid the temptation. Not perfectly, not every time at first, but eventually the addiction completely went away.

Now he’s in graduate school studying to be a professor, he’s got tons of confidence, he has deep, life long friendships with people with whom he does soul exchange. The addiction is gone. He’s a lot closer to Jesus. He is free at last, through the power of Christ, and his cooperation with it by showing his bondage to others, and telling his thoughts and feelings that lead to bondage what to do.

So back to the question: What’s your bondage? Breaking free from that bondage can happen at any age, at any stage in life. Maybe it’s not as dramatic as a drug addiction or a sexual addiction. Maybe it’s worry, or a critical spirit, or overspending that’s led to debt. Whatever it is, will you let one other person in on it? Will you take every thought captive, and tell those thoughts what to do, until Jesus sets you free from that bondage?

This week a doctor told me a story about a pastor who went to visit a patient in the hospital. The pastor said to the patient, “Is there anything that I can do for you?” The patient tried to talk but he couldn’t, so he frantically wrote something down on a piece of paper, but right as he was finishing, the patient passed out. The pastor was kind of freaked out about that so he looked at what the patient had written down, and it said, “You are standing on my oxygen hose.” Here’s the deal: there is life giving power in the name of Jesus, if we just don’t step on the hose and block what the Holy Spirit wants to do. The way we open that hose up is to show our bondage to others, and let them in on it, because there is a spiritual power that is released when we confess to God and one other person. Then, in Jesus’ name, we take every thought captive, and he will shatter our chains.

You know, so often we feel like there is nothing we can do about our bondage, we are just helpless victims to it. We think, “I’m worried, I’m lusting, I’m ill, I’ve got money problems, you name it, O, River of Despair, take me away.” We do not have to be passive. We can show our bondage to someone else and get their help. We can tell the thoughts and feelings that lead to bondage what to do. We can say, “Bondage, you are from the Devil. You do not have the right to do this to me. I am a child of God, redeemed in Jesus Christ. I am washed in his forgiveness. I am cleansed through his grace. I am strengthened by his spirit. I am who he says I am. I can do what he says I can do. I am a unique, unrepeatable, miracle of God, so back away, back off, and back down. I am free in Christ. I may be small, I may be ordinary, but when I call on Jesus everything is possible. Because at the name of Jesus strongholds are demolished, chains are shattered, prison doors fly open, captives are set free. Even the Devil has to bow down at the name of Jesus. And when I call on Jesus mountains are going to fall, and he’ll move heaven and earth to come rescue me when I call on him. So, bondage, you don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell – literally – of winning this war, so you might as well give up now, because when I call on Jesus, you’re going down.”

There is power in the name of Jesus, if we just don’t step on the hose.

Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008 (Archive on Thursday, February 21, 2008)
Posted by ken Contributed by ken

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