Welcome to the Conexus Church Podcast.

We are a church in central Ontario who simply believes that God is for you and your church should be as well.

We are so glad you've joined us and we pray that today's message will inspire and encourage you.

Let's jump in together.

I

hate you, why are you so far from me? Right, it's one Psalm's

Let's jump in.

Well, we're kicking off a brand new series today called Honest to God.

And we're so grateful to Toni Newhoff for providing her book to us today.

a special way to kick it off.

You're going to hear from her next week.

But we want to be the kind of church where you have the opportunity to ask honest questions, that whether you would say you're new to the exploration of faith or whether you would say you've been a follower of Jesus for a long time, we want to be the kind of place where you can ask the hard questions on your journey, that you can bring your doubts because we believe God is big enough to handle them.

And one of the things that can happen is is we can have moments in our life where sometimes things happen in our lives that kind of contradict what we believe about God.

I know, I'm

Let's jump in together.

Well, back in 2005, it was March, I took a group of students to New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina had hit.

And we spent most of our days gutting people's homes.

Many of these people didn't have insurance.

And so what we were doing was we were going in, taking out all of the items that were in their home and all of the drywall, which was all completely ruined.

And we would pile it all up in front of their home.

And they would pick out a few mementos, maybe a photo, maybe something important to them that survived.

him

Yep

...

in the message.

So, uh, it says this: "Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray.

Are any of you happy? You should sing praises.

Are any of you sick? You should call the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord.

Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.

Um, okay, in verse, verse 14 it says, "If you're sick," why does James say to call the elders instead of just praying on your own?

here.

And then he says this.

He says, you want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it.

You're jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and you wage war to take it away from them.

If you look at the Greek translation of this, it's more like a bop, bop, bop, bop.

It's like one punch than the other.

You don't have, so you scheme and kill.

That's

So if I know something is wrong, why does it still come out of my mouth?

Yeah, so this is the question about, you know, James in chapter 3 is getting to kind of the, you know, he alludes to the darkness that is in us.

He starts with, like, we all make mistakes, we all stumble, and then he's like, well, you know, Gehenna is in you, like that kind of, like, can leverage the words in you, and are you actually speaking...

Words that are tools of heaven are tools of hell.

I mean, he gets right to it.

But what is kind of at the heart of all that? I think what we kind of got at the end of Sunday is the heart of why this stuff comes out of us.

It comes out of our insecurity.

Why was Jesus gentle with some people but incredibly direct with others?

Let's jump in together.

Now, what I want to do is I want to ask you a question.

And in a really as well, put your hand up.

How many people have had a child in any kind of sport? Put your hand up.

Any kind of sport.

Okay.

Us as well.

you know?

Let's jump in together.

Well, maybe you're currently in high school or maybe you've been in high school and there were two teachers in your high school.

There were two young teachers.

They were single and you wondered, I wonder if something's going on between those two teachers.

And I can tell you that sometimes there is.

I was a high school teacher a long time ago.

and at the time was dating my current wife, Leslie.

Okay.