Category: Biblical reflections

Pulled Back Into the We: Lamenting Our Sin

bstuetze

Photo by Jace Miller

Last week we talked about the kind of honesty that refuses shortcuts—the honesty that tells the truth about my sin. The kind that stops minimizing, stops explaining, stops shifting blame, and finally says, “This is what I’ve done, and I need God to heal me.” It opens the door to mercy.

But there’s another kind of lament that may be even harder: lamenting our sin. Not just what I’ve done, but what we, as the people of God, have done together. The places where the Church has drifted. The places where we’ve compromised. The places where we’ve chosen comfort over courage, influence over integrity, or cultural approval over faithfulness to Jesus.

Corporate lament asks us to tell the truth about the Church we belong to—not the Church we wish we were, not the Church we pretend to be, but the Church we actually are. And that kind of truth‑telling is uncomfortable because it removes our ability to stand at a distance. It pulls us into the story. This is not about shame. It’s about honesty. And honesty is the doorway to healing.

When God speaks to His people in Scripture, He rarely speaks to individuals alone. He speaks to communities. He speaks to His people as a whole. And He invites them to return to Him together. “Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right.” (Isaiah 1:16–17) is a call to a whole community that has drifted from God’s heart. And “Come, let us return to the Lord… He will heal us.” (Hosea 6:1) reminds us that repentance is a shared journey. Healing comes when God’s people return together.

Corporate lament is the moment we stop pretending that the Church’s failures have nothing to do with us. It’s the moment we stop distancing ourselves from the parts of the Body we don’t like. It’s the moment we say, “We are the Church. And we want to be healed.”

Every generation of God’s people has had to face the truth about its own drift. Ours is no different. And while the specifics may vary from place to place, the patterns are painfully familiar. We’ve softened Scripture when it felt inconvenient. We’ve followed cultural voices more closely than the voice of Jesus. We’ve chosen comfort over obedience. We’ve defended institutions more fiercely than the vulnerable. These are not accusations. They are confessions. They are the places where the Church has drifted from the heart of Jesus.

And if we’re honest, we’ve all participated in that drift in one way or another—through silence, apathy, fear, convenience, misplaced loyalty, or simple distraction. “For our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us… we acknowledge our iniquities.” (Isaiah 59:12–13) This is not about shame—it’s about finally telling the truth together so God can heal us together.

Corporate lament also asks something that feels almost impossible: it asks us to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters in sins we personally didn’t commit, don’t agree with, and may even abhor. It asks us to say, “We did this,” even when our instinct is to say, “They did this.” We don’t want to be associated with harm we didn’t cause. We don’t want to be connected to choices we never would have made. We don’t want to carry responsibility for actions that grieve us.

But here’s the truth we often forget: others have had to do the same for us. There are things we have done—choices we’ve made, harm we’ve caused, blind spots we’ve carried—that other believers have had to stand beside, even though they didn’t commit those sins themselves. They’ve had to say “we” about things we did. They’ve had to carry the weight of our failures as part of the same Body. If we want grace for our own missteps, we must be willing to extend that same grace to the Church’s missteps—even the ones that aren’t ours personally.

Scripture keeps pulling us back into the “we.” Israel confessed as a people. The early Church repented as a people. The prophets spoke to the whole community, not just the guilty individuals. Paul confronted the whole church in Corinth, not just the man at the center of the scandal. Why? Because sin in the Body affects the whole Body. Because silence is participation. Because looking away is its own kind of agreement. Because blaming “those Christians over there” is just another way of avoiding the truth.

Corporate lament asks us to tell the truth about the harm we allowed, the harm we ignored, the harm we explained away, the harm we stayed silent about. It asks us to admit that sometimes we stood by with our arms crossed, pointing fingers, shaking our heads, blaming others—while people were being wounded in Jesus’ name. It asks us to say words we don’t want to say: We failed. We allowed this. We protected the wrong things. We hurt people. We looked away. We chose comfort over courage. We chose reputation over repentance.

This is the posture Ezra and Nehemiah took when they prayed for Israel. They didn’t stand outside the people’s sin; they stepped into it. They confessed as part of the community, saying “we have sinned” even when they personally had not committed the wrong. They understood that belonging means responsibility. Belonging means honesty. Belonging means standing in the truth together so we can be healed together.

Throughout Scripture, whenever God’s people lamented and returned to Him together, He restored them together. After Ezra confessed the sins of the nation, God brought cleansing and renewed worship. When Nehemiah led the people in corporate repentance, God restored their unity, their identity, and their joy. And at Pentecost, when thousands repented as one people, God poured out His Spirit and birthed the Church. This is the pattern of God: when His people tell the truth together, He heals them together.

And this is where your life and mine intersect the story: our personal decisions shape the Body, whether we intend them to or not. When we choose convenience over conviction, the Body absorbs the cost. When we avoid truth, the Body carries the wound. Silence is not kindness—it is a failure of love. It is a refusal to care enough about one another to name what is real.

This is the part of lament that humbles us the most. It strips away our defenses. It removes our ability to say, “That’s not my problem.” It pulls us into the story and asks us to stand in the light—not as isolated individuals, but as a community that needs God’s mercy. And this is where healing begins.

We can’t heal what we won’t name. And as painful as it is to face the truth about our drift, God meets us in that honesty. He doesn’t turn away from a confessing people—He draws near, He listens, and He responds with mercy. This has always been the pattern of Scripture: “Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right.” (Isaiah 1:16–17). “Come, let us return to the Lord.” (Hosea 6:1). “Humble yourselves.” (James 4:10). And then the promise: “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us.” (Hosea 6:2). This is resurrection language. This is God’s heart toward a people who return: revival, restoration, new life.

Corporate lament is not about beating ourselves up. It’s about opening ourselves up. It’s about making space for God to reshape us into a people who look like Jesus again.

At the end of the day, corporate lament is not about what we’ve done wrong. It’s about who we want to become. A Church that tells the truth. A Church that refuses to hide. A Church that loves Scripture enough to obey it. A Church that chooses integrity over influence. A Church that is humble, honest, and ready for resurrection.

This is the Church we long to be. This is the Church Jesus is calling us to become. And lament is how we begin.

Please help me share the good news of Jesus and how He can change your life, and our world!

Like, share, comment, and add your email to receive blog posts, podcasts, and more!

Come back and visit at ListenLearn.Live Ministries

El Roi – The God Who Sees Me

bstuetze

 

Photo by Elif Kübra yaşar

There are moments in life when being unseen feels heavier than being hurt. You know the moments I mean — the ones where you’re surrounded by people but feel invisible, the ones where you’re carrying something no one else knows about, the ones where you’re trying to hold your life together with shaking hands. Every culture, every country, every generation knows this ache. It’s part of being human.

Into that ache comes one of the most surprising stories in Scripture — a story that speaks across borders, languages, and life experiences. It’s the story of a woman named Hagar in Genesis 16, and it reveals a God who sees what others overlook. A God who sees you. A God who stays. A God who meets you where you are, but loves you too much to leave you there.

This God has a name: El Roi — “The God who sees me.” And Hagar is the first person in the entire Bible to speak that name. Not a king, not a prophet, not a priest. A mistreated, pregnant, enslaved woman running into the desert with nowhere to go. That’s who God reveals Himself to. And that matters.

Hagar’s story begins with pain. She is used, blamed, mistreated, and finally driven out. She runs into the wilderness — not because she’s rebellious, but because she’s desperate. Many of us know that feeling. Running doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like shutting down emotionally, avoiding hard conversations, numbing ourselves, pretending we’re fine, or returning to old patterns simply because they feel familiar. Running is often a survival instinct, but it rarely leads us to healing.

And yet, this is where the story turns. While Hagar is running away from everything that hurt her, God is running toward her. Genesis says, “The angel of the Lord found her.” Not by accident. Not by coincidence. He went looking for her. And He goes looking for you too.

When God finds Hagar, He calls her by name. No one else in the story has done that. She has been treated like property, like a problem, like a burden — but God sees her as a person. He sees her pain, her story, her fear, her dignity, her future. And He sees the truth — the whole truth — about her situation. Not just the wounds she carries or the injustice done to her, but also the choices she’s made, the running she’s done, the fear that drives her. And He doesn’t turn away.

This is one of the most hopeful truths in Scripture: God sees the truth about you — and He stays with you. Most of us are used to people who stay only when we’re doing well, when we’re strong, when we’re easy to love. But God stays when we’re messy. He stays when we’re hurting. He stays when we’re running. He stays when we’re not at our best. He stays because His love is not fragile.

Then comes the part of the story that challenges us. God tells Hagar to return. It’s easy to misunderstand this moment. God is not sending her back into danger. He is not minimizing her pain. He is not saying, “Just go back and everything will be fine.” Sometimes people talk about obedience like it’s a shortcut to comfort — as if doing the right thing will make life smooth or painless. But that’s not the story the Bible tells, and it’s not the story most of us live.

The truth is that obedience is often hard. It may hurt. It may require humility you don’t feel ready for. It may lead you straight into the places you’ve been avoiding. Going back didn’t magically fix Hagar’s situation. It didn’t erase the tension. It didn’t guarantee that the people who hurt her would suddenly change. And the same is true for us. Doing what God asks doesn’t mean everything will get easier. Sometimes it gets harder before it gets better. Sometimes obedience feels like walking through fire.

But here’s the difference — and it’s everything: you don’t walk through the fire alone. You don’t walk through it in

Photo by Johannes Plenio

your own strength. And you don’t walk through it without purpose. God doesn’t promise ease. He promises presence. He promises grace. He promises strength for the step you’re taking — not the one you’re imagining five steps ahead. And He promises that on the other side of the fire, there is freedom. Not freedom from pain, but freedom from the patterns that keep us stuck. Not freedom from difficulty, but freedom from the fear that keeps us running. Not freedom from suffering, but freedom from the lie that we are alone in it.

Obedience doesn’t guarantee that bad things won’t happen. But it does guarantee that God will give you what you need to walk through whatever comes — and to come out more whole, more healed, and more free. Hagar didn’t return because it was easy. She returned because God met her in the wilderness, called her by name, and promised to go with her. And that’s the only reason any of us can take the hard path too.

So let me ask you gently: where do you need to hear, “God sees you”? Where have you been running? What step of obedience is God inviting you to take — even if it scares you? And who can walk with you so you don’t take that step alone?

Here’s the truth: you are not unseen. You are not forgotten. You are not alone. God sees the parts of your story you’ve never said out loud. He sees the nights you cried yourself to sleep. He sees the moments you almost gave up. He sees the choices you regret and the choices you never got to make. He sees the wounds you carry and the walls you’ve built to protect them.

And He does not turn away. He comes toward you. He calls you by name. He speaks into your wilderness. He gives you a promise alongside His command. And as you take the next step — even a small one — grace meets you where you are, and strength comes as you obey.

The God who sees you is the God who stays with you. Always.

Please help me share the good news of Jesus and how He can change your life, and our world!

Like, share, comment, and add your email to receive blog posts, podcasts, and more!

Come back and visit at ListenLearn.Live Ministries