Written by Daniel P. Miller |
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
We may lack the power to control every aspect of every emotional reaction that other people’s words or actions ignite in us. But we are responsible for rightly responding to those reactions and repenting whenever they prove sinful.

Preparing for Hurt in the Church
We live in a fallen world. As glorious and wonderful as life in the church is, God’s people have not yet been fully delivered from the effects of sin. So we need to learn to set our expectations for life in the church aright. Here are four truths you need to start believing right now to prepare yourself for the disappointment and hurt you’ll inevitably experience in your church.
First, every relationship you have in the church is ultimately about the reputation of Jesus Christ. When I am driven by a Spirit-empowered zeal to exalt Christ as Lord and Savior, I will labor to display his reconciling love in the difficult relationships he ordains for me. Such zeal for Christ’s glory must rule my feelings. It must overrule fleshly desires that pull me in other directions. My pain is not all about me. It’s ultimately all about Jesus’s honor as displayed in the church he died to redeem.
In this addition to the Church Questions series, Daniel Miller helps Christians understand their moral responsibility when responding to common frustrations in the church.
When hurt feelings become more important than Christ’s honor in the church, sin is certain to shipwreck our relationships. As Christians, we shouldn’t be ruled by our hurt feelings. Instead, we need to cultivate thoughts, words, attitudes, and desires that exalt Jesus. If we allow our feelings, especially hurt feelings, to reign supreme, we will cause damage to his church.
Valuing Christ’s glory above our feelings or personal comforts is hard. Our self-oriented culture trains us to put ourselves first, especially when we’re in pain. Of course, we shouldn’t muzzle our feelings. We must learn to acknowledge and deal with them forthrightly, as we’ll consider in a moment. Still, throughout that process, don’t ever lose sight of the larger agenda: glorifying Christ and seeing his kingdom exalted. The glory of Jesus displayed in his church must remain our primary ambition amid any pain we endure—even pain in the church.
Second, personal offenses are inevitable in a fallen world. Living in a Genesis 3 world doesn’t mean we should dismiss or fatalistically resign ourselves to any offense others may inflict. But it does mean that we—unlike the typical politician, media operative, psychologist, celebrity, or national citizen—believe in human depravity. We should therefore anticipate the ways depravity will make our lives difficult.
People will sinfully offend you. Your feelings will get ruffled if not pierced through by the words, decisions, and deeds of others. When this happens, don’t be shocked. Nothing strange is happening. Don’t buy the lie that your hurt is somehow unique. It’s not (1 Cor. 10:13).
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Written by Daniel P. Miller |
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Set your eyes on eternity. This is not a means of ignoring reality, but the only way of truly facing it. There is a day when all the pain you suffer from the presence of sin and Satan will vanish. Focus more on your future accounting before Christ than on those who fail you on earth. Above all, trust in the Lord who promises never to leave or forsake his children (Heb. 13:5). Local churches hurt people. Thankfully, the Lord of the church will one day wipe away every tear, including yours.

Dear Brother or Sister,
Local churches hurt people. People hurt people, of course, but since churches are people, churches have the capacity to inflict severe relational pain.
By God’s grace the reverse is also true. The local church is designed by Christ to function as a spring of encouragement and joy to its members. I hope that you have experienced the blessing of walking in fellowship with a body of believers that Jesus used, or is now using, to strengthen your faith and envelop you in covenantal love.
But despite Christ’s gracious provision, you may find yourself experiencing heartache in the context of a church for which Jesus died. Ironic, isn’t it? By grace alone the risen Christ is gathering out of the nations a people for his name (Acts 2:38–39). He forms us into a new humanity, uniting us to himself (Eph. 2:11–22; Gal. 2:20). We are adopted as his children and chosen as his holy bride (Rom. 8:14–17; Eph. 5:23–32; Rev. 19:6–8). He sovereignly places us in the body to complete one another (1 Cor. 12:12–27). How ironic, then, that relating to God’s people can result in such deep heartache.
Ironic, but not mysterious. The closer the human relationship, the more pain one suffers when that relationship falters. We routinely witness this in families. It’s why divorce, child rebellion, family feuds, neglect, and the like are such bitter heartaches. The closer the relationship, the greater the potential not only for joy but also for sorrow.
In the spiritual family of a local church, such heartache often stems from personal offense—one member wrongs another. At other times the problem is more corporate in nature—the departure of a leader, a change in policy, an altered ministry direction that seems to betray much of what you once loved about your church, and the like.
It’s not hard to identify the source of the pain we suffer in the context of a body of believers. It’s considerably harder to respond to that pain in God-honoring ways.
Don’t breeze past that “God-honoring” bit. Expressive Individualism programs us to feel our pain while avoiding hard questions about our responses to it. Hurt feelings are as natural as shivering from cold on a wintry day, we are assured by our therapeutic world. Therefore, how I feel about someone’s ill treatment of me or how I feel about a hurtful ministry change becomes not only my responsibility to own but everyone else’s obligation to affirm.
The Bible does not counsel us in this direction. Rather, it calls us to respond to such pain with a devotion to love others and glorify Christ in his church. This means that despite how terribly I may feel, Christ’s renown remains of supreme importance. Therefore my affections for his honor in the assembly must never fall below affections for my own. If they do I am likely to cause as much damage in the future as I’ve suffered in the past.
Our Redeemer is never surprised by sin, nor has he ever promised us a church that’s free of it. Every church family hurts people one way or another. What the Lord has done is to arm us with wise, Christ-honoring habits of response. While not an exhaustive list, consider the following disciplines.
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