Spiritual Healing - Operation Restoration, Part 1

There is a verse in Proverbs that has become near and dear to my heart, not because I like it, but simply because it’s true. It says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

What I want you to know, for you or we are going to talk about spiritual healing or what I call it is: Operation Restoration.

Notice the question: So what do you do when someone you know fails morally, turns away from Christ, deserts their spouse, or shows signs of spiritual drifting?

What I would like you to do before you turn the page and jump into the passage, lean back just a little, okay? On a scale of one to ten: Your life is moving more closely and drawing nearer to God; or Your life is drifting slightly, or fast, away from God. Where would you plot yourself?

Second question: What one person would come to mind who you know is a genuine follower of Christ who you sense they are really not walking with the Lord? They are beginning to drift. And if no one comes to mind, would you pray one of those little prayers in your mind right now and say, God, if there is someone, would You bring them to my mind right now? Because what you are going to get equipped with in just a few moments is a very specific way that God wants to use you to draw them back to Christ.

With that, open your notes if you will, and let’s look at what the Bible teaches about drawing people back when we wander. Because we all do.

James chapter 5, verse 19, he says, “My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth, and someone should bring him back, remember this,” or, “this you must know,” it’s a little bit more emphatic in the Greek than it is here, “whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.”

I want you to circle the word if, I want you to put a box around the word wander, I want you to put a circle around the words turns a sinner, and then put a box around the word death.

Very straightforward passage. It says there’s a problem and then it gives the solution.

The problem is, notice, “if,” notice, “one of you.” This is written to Christians. “Brothers,” notice there’s a tender heart. No one is mad at anyone. It’s the apostle early on, there’s persecution, there’s difficulty. A lot of Christians are getting killed for being Christians. There’s a lot of peer pressure. A lot of these early Jews, when they would follow Jesus, their families would disown them. That meant they didn’t have a business to fall back on or relationships.

And in the midst of all this, “My brothers, if anyone among you,” notice what, “drifts” or “wanders from the truth.”

The word wander, you know what word we get in English? The word planet. In the ancient world, you would see the stars and the constellations, of course, would move across the sky. But there would be these stars that they just seemed to wander around. Well, they were planets.

And so over time, the word came to mean something that was moving around. And early on they were trying to figure out: What’s the course? All the stars seemed to be very, very stable. The planets are moving.

And so he says, “If you know one of your brothers or one of your sisters who wanders,” and then it’s a very interesting construciton. The idea of this is that you might wander because you make a willful choice, but it’s a construction in which you may be wandering and not even know it.

And so he says, If that should happen, here’s the solution. Someone should bring him back. If we are aware, we are to take the initiative.

And then he talks about if a sinner turns from the error of his way, you’ll save him from death. And we’ll talk about what that means. But that word turn is used both of believers and unbelievers.

When Jesus was speaking to Peter, and Peter said, “I’ll die with You,” remember? And Jesus said, “Actually, you are going to deny Me three times before we hear the rooster cry.” And then in the scenario He says, “Satan is seeking to sift you. But Peter, I have prayed for you. And after you blow it and turn,” this is this word, “go back and help your brothers.”

And so the word is used of a believer who strayed away from God or an unbeliever. It’s the idea, regardless of who it’s addressed to, of someone who is going in a direction and you help them do a one hundred and eighty degree turn in their life.

And so the problem is wandering from the truth. The solution is to bring them back to God. Can I ask you that question one more time? Is there someone that you know in this condition right now? Who comes to your mind? What is your responsibility from this passage?

I had an opportunity to talk with a young gal who is involved in ministry in this area, a number, a number of months ago. And a long, long, long conversation. And she is a person who fits this perfectly.

And as I prayed, I didn’t know her that well, but she was involved in ministry, knew a lot of people in this area, and literally is living in a lifestyle that she would tell everyone was the opposite of everything that she believes now.

And then can we just get real about this, why this is hard? I want everyone to return. I just don’t want to be the one to confront them, right? Don’t look at me like that.

Because, see, what I’ve got is - she came to church, we had a little bit of a connection, I jotted her a note, I gave her a book, she promised that she would read it. She never got back to me. I waited and made a follow-up call, “Hey, have you read it? How are you doing?”

I waited another couple, three weeks, I did another follow-up. And then it was like, because I’m a guy and she’s a woman, I thought, I think my time is done here. Like, “Theresa, you go see her or something.”

But I just had that little prompting as I was praying about this and thought, I need to call and find out how she’s doing. Who do you need to call and find out how they’re doing? Because people are wandering. And when they do, it causes death. And the death he is talking about here is, it can be physical death, but death in Scripture is separation from God.

Remember? Adam and Eve in the Garden, “In the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely die,” right? They eat. Well, they didn’t pysically die, but they were then separated from God. We’ll talk a little bit more about what it means in this passage.

Now, let’s talk about how to go about this, because my experience is there are a couple of extremes: You’re thinking about this person who needs to be drawn back to God and one extreme is, many of you sitting here are going, Wait, wait, wait a second. Who am I to judge, right?

You can see they are kind of flirting or you can see that you think they returned to an addiction but you’re not sure. Or you haven’t seen them around in a while but how do you graciously bring it up?

And, by the way, “Judge not lest you be judged,” right? You’ll quote to me Matthew chapter 7, verses 1 and 2. And we are not to judge other people. In fact, when you go to them and you say, “Hey, I’m concerned about you,” and as I said to someone very close in our family who had really, really drifted and I opened the conversation with, “I just want you to know I am really concerned about your soul,” and what I got back was some cuss words telling me, “I don’t need you thinking about my soul,” which told me that was a little awkward and hard.

And it was kind of like, “Who are you?” But if you would keep reading in Matthew 7 on to verse 3, it would say, right? It’s going to go on and say, “Who are you” – right? “to get the speck out of your brother’s eye,” and then we quote that. But keep reading. Because what it goes on to say – not, don’t confront; not, don’t judge; not, don’t evaluate one another’s lives out of a heart of love – but first, take the log out of your eye so that you can, what? Take the speck out of your brother’s.

See, we were made as a body to be like an immune system to help one another. We are all going to drift. Part of the reason why we have so many small groups is I need a group of people who…we all look good on the outside, right? And we can all do the general stuff, “Oh, I love God, you love God,” quote a verse, “I’m reading the Bible some.”

You can go through all the external activity and your heart be really moving far away from God. And the only way that you’re really close is when you are honest with one another with vulnerable relationships.

And so what I want you to know is that you’re not judging someone, now, for some, you’ve got to really ask, What’s my motive? But we are not judging people when we have a genuine concern and ask them in a gentle way, and we are going to learn exactly how to do it later.

But ask them in a gentle way, “How are you really doing?” And, “I’m concerned about you.” Because we actually have a responsibility to hold one another up and bear one another’s burdens.

So one extreme is: I’m not going to do this because I don’t want to judge anyone.

And then the other extreme is there are some people in every church who feel like there is God, the Holy Spirit, and they have this badge called, “Junior Holy Spirit.” And they love to do it!

And they have, however many commandments there are in the Bible, they have, like, one hundred more. And whatever might be grey and some people believe this and some people believe that and it’s an issue of conscience. There is no…they have got down what everyone should be and what they should do and shouldn’t do. And they blast you, right? What’s wrong with you? You say you’re a Christian and you’re doing that and you’re doing that and I can’t believe you. And it’s one of those people who you think, That is why I almost didn’t become a Christian. Very, very legalistic; very, very judgmental; very, very harsh. And they have this personal responsibility to bash people.

We so don’t want to come off like that, we let people drift. We are so afraid that someone is going to view us like that, we let people we love drift away from God. And here’s the thing: For some people, you’re the greatest Christian they know, you have the greatest trust. If you don’t say something, if you don’t intervene, no one will.

It’s just like a picture of watching a person float downstream and, by the way, and what this passage says is there is a waterfall coming a lot like Niagara and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s deep and they are floating here and it might be not a big problem. The consequences are moderate here. Here, they just lost their marriage, they just turned their kids off, they are just back in an addiction, they may actually lose their life.

And when we see that, God says, I want you to intervene if you see a brother or sister wandering, you draw them back. And when you do, you save them from separation from God and it covers a multitude of sins.

The question I would say is: How do you do that? And James doesn’t say, does he? He just says, “Do it.” And so I would like to suggest there is a two-part strategy that we get from the context of this passage, but I think even more from a very parallel passage that teaches us exactly how to do it.

God’s two-part strategy for restoration is, Number one, pray for them. I know you hear: Pray. I mean really pray. Jot in your notes: Proverbs 21:1. The fact of the matter is the reason I have drifted away from God, the reason anyone drifts away from God is your heart gets hard.

Your heart gets hard. And pretty soon you don’t hear His voice. And you have a responsibility and I have a responsibility to love them, to care for them, to show compassion, to speak words of life, to speak words of accountability or even rebuke them in the right way. But words just can bounce off. The only One who can change a heart is – who? - is God.

Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it whatever way He wishes.” So you need to see yourself as: I have talked, I have shared. Like with this gal that I am thinking about, today I said, Okay, God, who knows all things and is all powerful, I am sending up a prayer to You.

I pray, God, You’ll turn her heart back to You. I pray specifically, God, would You make her life miserable in her current state of affairs? Would You cause the sin that she or some other person is involved in to have no pleasure anymore? God, would You take the velvet vice of Your love and however hard, and I’m asking You to be gentle, but however hard You need to do this to bring this person to see this is not the lifestyle, apart from You? Lord, will You do that?

Some of us have prayed that for our children during big times of their rebellion. And it’s hard, because you beg, Oh, God, please be gentle. But whatever it takes. A life of a believer, apart from God, moving in the opposite direction, is a very dangerous place to be.

I remember maybe the first time I learned to pray like this, I was a young pastor, and I had just moved from my very first pastorate to California many, many years ago. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, Oh, wow, what’s going on? And it was a digital clock: Two-o-something. And I was just wide awake. And I thought, Wow.

And so I got up and I read a little bit and then I shut my eyes as I prayed and then I did what I need to do more often. Then I just shut up and I said, Lord, I don’t know why You got me up and maybe it’s nothing special. But if so, would You please bring it to my mind? And, honestly, I’d like to get back to bed. And so whatever You want me to do, would You, let’s take care of it.

And as I sat quietly, He brought four people, very specifically to mind, and whispered, not an audible voice, I want you to write them a letter and I want you to tell them, just tell them the impact they have had in your life and how just the quality of their life and what it meant. Okay.

So I jotted them each a note and one I was really burdened for. And so I thought, You know that message of a couple weeks ago? For whatever reason, I think that would be great for this guy. So I went into the office the next day, took my little envelope, sent him that message.

Two days later I was talking to a mutual friend who knew the situation where I came from. And they said, “Did you hear about so-and-so?” I said, “Hear what?” “He’s not walking with the Lord anymore.” “Oh, no. No, are you kidding me?” “No, no, no. He is, like, way, way. He’s whoo.” I said, “That guy? He was a leader in the church. This was how he helped me. He helped all my kids. He led part of the youth group. Man, I know it was a really hard time and I think his wife left him or something really bad happened, but he’s got great kids. He’s what?”

And then I thought, Wow, I just wrote him a letter two days ago, outlining his spiritual history and how God has amazingly used his life over the years. And then I thought of the message I sent. I thought, Wowie!

And here’s the point: God so loves and so cares about every, single person who has wandered and drifting away from Him. In this case, He went all the way to California to wake up one guy who didn’t want to get up, brought a name, told him what to do and what message to send Him because He cared so much about another guy states far away.

When you pray, God can do that. God can change people’s hearts.