Living Word Live! God Wants To Reach You

But before we finish, we have to go back to that question that we started with. Do you remember the question? How can someone believe the truth, see the truth, and still refuse to believe it? The answer is surprisingly simple because the problem is rarely about evidence, about the facts. The problem is the heart. When truth threatens something that we love, you know, our pride, our comfort, our control, that's my favorite, we become very good at pretending that we didn't see it. And that's what Jesus was warning about in the story of of Lazarus and the and the rich man. [00:59:49] (45 seconds)  #TruthVsPride

We get used to ignoring the quiet voice of god when he nudges us to to care, to help, to change something. And I think little by little, our hearts learn how to walk past what should stop us, and that's how it happens. I don't think anyone wakes up one morning and says, I'm gonna have a hardened heart today. It happens slowly, doesn't it? One ignored moment at a time, one one quiet conviction at a time, one opportunity to love that we decide is inconvenient, awkward, uncomfortable, until eventually we become the kind of person who can walk past Lazarus without even noticing him anymore. [00:43:29] (58 seconds)  #SlowlyHardenedHeart

Sometimes people imagine that if they could just see, like we heard today, if they could just see a miracle, believing in God would be easy. You know, if I could just have this one time to see something that's undeniable, I believe. But history over the centuries tells us a different story. There were people who saw Jesus heal the sick. Right? They saw the blind receive sight. They saw the lame walk. They saw Lazarus for Pete's sake. I always throw Peter under the bus, don't I? They saw him come out of the grave and they still refused to believe. So the problem has never been a lack of evidence. The problem has always been the human heart. [01:00:38] (47 seconds)  #EvidenceIsntEnough

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to ignore something that you don't want to deal with? In our household, there is someone who when they hear a strange noise in the car, they just turn the radio up louder. Seriously, I mean a doctor tells you that you need to pay attention to something and you tell yourself, ah, it's probably nothing. Or a friendship, a relationship, even with family begins to break down, but you avoid the conversation because it's awkward, it's uncomfortable. Sometimes the truth is sitting right outside our gate, and we just keep walking past it. [01:01:30] (51 seconds)  #IgnoreTheWarning

But I want to tell you, I want to make sure you understand that God loves us too much to leave us there, so he keeps knocking. He keeps speaking. He keeps shining light into our lives. So if you're hearing his voice today, that means he's reaching out to you right now. And he's not doing that to condemn you or to shame you, but to bring you home, to bring you close. And the beautiful thing about grace is that the moment that you turn toward him, you discover that he has been reaching for you the whole time. [01:02:20] (43 seconds)  #GodKeepsKnocking

But the people listening to that story, that that parable that Jesus told, they would have understood exactly what Jesus was talking about. He wasn't just telling a story about a rich man, about wealth and poverty. He was exposing a a religious system that had become comfortable, powerful, and also blind to the suffering right outside its gate. That's why the pharisees were, you know, ticked off. That's why they're angry with Jesus because because sometimes the truth hits closest to home. I don't know who said this, but it's right. Sometimes the people who know the most about God are the ones who become the best at ignoring him. [00:55:45] (57 seconds)  #ComfortableAndBlind

I wrote this down because I think the scariest part of this story isn't how cruel the rich man was. It's it's how normal his life probably felt to him. Seeing Lazarus just became a fixture in his life. The need was right there in front of him. The truth was right in front of that rich man in the story, And that's how he managed to live as if that that poor man didn't exist. Well, in the story, both men eventually die. Poor man was carried by angels to the to Abraham's side, and the rich man found himself in torment. There are some great pictures of that as well, paintings rather. [00:44:36] (57 seconds)  #NeglectBecomesNormal

Because I know when I first read that story and when I looked at some of the the pictures and the paintings, I thought, how in the world could somebody possibly do that? Walk past that man. How could they they they ignore, see a person right there suffering and ignore them? But then something uncomfortable happens, I think, for all of us. If we sit in this story long enough, if we look at it long enough, we realize Jesus didn't tell the story so that he we would, look at the rich man and point fingers at him. [00:41:51] (38 seconds)  #ReflectDontCondemn