The Christians Hour

Cody Custer: Welcome to the Christians Hour. I'm Cody Custer, your host, and it's a joy to welcome you to our program. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission where our heart is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth by radio and media until all have heard. And we do that right here in your backyard and around the world.

In fact, we have teams working all across Asia producing programs in multiple languages to get the Gospel into some of the most difficult regions on earth. God continues to go before us to transcend barriers and reach people right where they are with His love. Now you may notice a new name and a new voice, but I am behind the same microphone of those who have gone before me. A sincere thank you to Stan Smelcer, who has hosted this program for the past five years. I'm grateful for his heart and passion for this ministry. He has truly been a blessing to me and I hope you feel the same way.

Well, I'm excited to continue this forth, boldly and faithfully sharing the sound biblical teaching that you've always trusted. In today's message, Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, invites us to explore different aspects of our lives that we need to consider ending. He calls them necessary endings, helping us understand the importance of identifying habits which hold us back. These endings allow us to make more room for God and are necessary for our spiritual growth. Here's Ben.

Ben Cachiaras: There's a spiritual mystic by the name of Meister Eckhart and he's famous for saying that the key to our spiritual growth is not always adding some new thing in, but rather subtraction. It's sometimes what we stop doing that actually makes all the difference when we cut something out because the key to spiritual growth is not in what we add to our lives, it's what we subtract from it.

You see what a game changer this concept can be for us, to move away from instinctively and immediately always thinking about accumulation. What am I going to start doing and add on? But instead focusing on elimination. So, I want to share with us today and help us think for a little while about a very important biblical concept here that's absolutely crucial if we're going to flourish in life. It's a key to healthy relationships. It's a key to good mental health. It's a key, let's say, if you're moving through grief. It's a key even to practical things, like if you're running a business that you hope continues to stay profitable. It's a key we pay attention to in the church as we try to lead this ministry all the time. It's a hugely important concept.

And yet to be completely honest, it's one that I struggle with a whole lot, and I think a lot of us do. We resist it, we fear it, and in doing so, we sabotage and rob ourselves of flourishing. So, if you're going to move forward, if you're going to grow up, if you're going to be healthy and flourish, then we're going to have to understand the concept of necessary endings. You will never be tomorrow who you desire to be and you will never get to the future God intends for you if you don't learn how to end some things today. For us to grow, to get to a new level, to take another step, something has to end.

When you think about it, life is all about stages, phases, seasons. And you can't have anything unless something old ends, or in some cases, until we let go of something. So, if you're an infant, infancy has to end for you to become a toddler. Childhood has to end if you're ever going to become an adult, and some childish ways have to end if you're ever going to become a mature adult. So, there's always something to leave behind. Growth demands it.

If you and I don't realize this and really learn how to end things or let things end, we tend to stay stuck in a lot of really important areas of our lives. We shrivel, we don't develop. In business, for example, sometimes you've got to let the old product line go, even though it maybe built your business up. Yesterday's brilliant idea or bestseller is not going to get you there. Well, that same concept actually plays out in our personal lives, our spiritual lives, in so many other areas of our lives.

There are relationships that should go away. There are practices and habits that we've come to depend on that need to end. There are activities that we engage in all the time, phases of our lives that need to be relinquished, cast off. The unplugging of some activities, the saying no, whether it's to the onslaught of over-commitment or destructive behaviors that hold us back or thought patterns. Letting some things die, or in some cases killing some things, is important so we don't stay stuck in certain situations and mindsets that could be toxic or unhelpful and keep us from flourishing.

So, endings are necessary. And yet, we tend to resist it. We're afraid of endings, aren't we? We're afraid to let go of the familiar. We're afraid of the sadness of letting go, so we hold on too long. Maybe we believe that time will change something, even though it might not, or that everything's fixable when it's not. Sometimes the comfortable stuckness of today seems just preferable than the unknown on the other side of an ending, so we put off the ending.

So, this concept, I want to help us see. We'll use a lot of scripture here to help us appreciate how this idea is all over the Bible. One of the most beautiful examples I want to talk through for a minute is out of the book of Ecclesiastes. It's right in the middle of your Bible. Ecclesiastes is what we call wisdom literature. It's not written by some young influencer who posts about his workout or tips for how to run your business. No, this is a book that's written by a wise old teacher who has lived a long life and seen it all, had some hard knocks, and he's seen some things die, he's killed off some things himself, and now with the voice of experience in his wise older years, he speaks truth to anyone who will listen.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3. It begins by saying, for everything there is a season. Seasons come and seasons go. Exactly. That's what he's saying. Sometimes seasons go or need to go. He says there's a time to be born and there's a time to die. Endings are a part of life. They are necessary and they are normal. They're natural and they're needed. The sooner we accept all that, the better we'll become at recognizing a moment that comes in your life when you go, "Oh, this is when an ending needs to happen."

It's a time to plant, there's a time to harvest. He says there's a time to kill and a time to heal. You can spend a lot of time trying to fix some things to make it work, to heal it, to make it better, whether it's an old car or a problem or a situation. But sometimes you need to look at the reality square in the face and realize this thing is not going to get healed or fixed and it needs to die. That's a necessary ending.

There's a time to tear down and a time to build up. There's a time he says to cry, there's a time to laugh, there's a time to grieve and a time to dance. It happens for all of us. A time to scatter some stones. Sometimes you're in a building and growth mode, and other times you're not. You need to just let it go. There's a time, he says, to embrace and a time to turn away. This gets down to relationships, I think. There are times in relationships where if you keep embracing, you're not helping. You're not being loving.

The necessary thing to do in some circumstances is to show some tough love by not continuing to enable, to say to that addict, even though you love them, or that abusive person, or that person who chronically lies or mistreats or disrespects your boundaries, to say, "I'm not going to be dependent and part of your delusion here that everything's okay and perpetuate this problem because that's not loving." It's very difficult to do, but part of you wants to embrace, but there are times when we just know I need to turn away right now.

And there's a time to search and there's a time to quit searching. Mature people know how to accept reality, look in the mirror, face reality in the face and say this business is not going to work, this idea is not going to work, this approach to this problem our family is trying is not going to work, and it's time to do something different and have a necessary ending. There's a time to keep and there's a time to throw away. Whether you're talking about stuff in your garage or your closet or your schedule and your commitments, you'll never have enough room for the right stuff if you keep all the wrong stuff.

You've got to have some endings. There's a time to tear down and there's a time to mend. Some people are not worth being friends with. There, I said it. They're not good. They're what the Bible would call foolish or evil people, and they'll do nothing but drag you down. So you don't have to be a jerk about it, and you can still pray for them and hope the best for them, but you might not be the one who's supposed to be in their life right now. So the next time they do something stupid or treat you like trash, instead of rushing to patch everything up, you can just say we need to have an ending here.

There's a time to be quiet and there's a time to speak. And wisdom is the description about you that tells you when to do which. Some of us need an ending to how quickly we speak up. That should stop. And some of us need an ending to our silence because it's time to speak up about something. There's a time to love and a time to hate. That's interesting, isn't it? What comes to mind here for me is that we're so kind to our sin. We're so polite and tolerant with our sin because we love it. We've made peace with it. We're friends with it. We've given it residence.

We've opened the front door and just said, "Come on and just stay as long as you want," even though sometimes our sin is destroying our happiness and our joy. It's filling us with shame and toxic thoughts. The very thing that needs to be subtracted from some of our lives is an attitude or a habit or a practice that we have coddled and loved so dearly. And we need to rise up a little bit and say, "I hate my sin and I'm going to ask Jesus to help me have a necessary ending because there is a time for peace, but there is a time for war. There's a time for necessary endings."

Scripture says wisdom is knowing the season you're in. And you're foolish if you refuse to have an ending when it's clear that's what needs to happen, that that's what is needed for your flourishing. Now, let's look a little deeper in scripture. We can start right at the very beginning of the Bible. Genesis chapter 1 shows us a picture of creation right off the bat. God creates day and night time. There was evening and there was morning. God ends each day, as if to say necessary endings are built into all of creation.

You can see unfolding in the creation this rhythm of opening and closure, of work and rest, ebb and flow, the seasons, the days, the moon, the tides, the work and Sabbath rest. Not endless activity. No, from the very beginning, God says reality and creation itself rests on necessary endings. So what can we learn? Endings are not failures. They're part of reality and they're part of God's design for flourishing.

When you apply this to your personal life, it just gets so fascinating. You look at some of these scriptures, it's all the way through the Bible. After a while you start seeing it everywhere. Proverbs chapter 4, verses 25 and following, say that we should look straight ahead and keep your eyes on the right target, stay on the safe path. Don't get sidetracked swerving over here and over there, but turn your foot away from evil. See, when God's got you on a good path, it's very easy to get sidetracked, get distracted. We're going to go over here and I'm going to fix that, or I'm going to work on that.

And that's how we get stuck off in the ditches in the mud of the ditches. Listen, do you have a necessary ending in your life where you need to turn your foot away from evil right now because you keep getting sidetracked and off the path? The Bible's word for this is repent, where we turn away. God says go this way and I'm going this way. I turn and I go God's way. Are you sidetracked by some shiny little object that's over there and it's time to put an end to it?

Proverbs 13:20 says walk with the wise and you become wise. You associate with fools and you'll get in trouble. The companion of fools suffers harm. So here we see this is about relationships. Not all relationships are meant to continue indefinitely and at the same level where you give access to everyone in the same way. No, that's foolish. Now, I want to say something here. It's important to understand the difference between hurt and harm.

As we're trying to make a decision about a necessary ending, it almost always hurts. It's uncomfortable. And that's the reason we stay stuck sometimes, is because it feels like it would be too hard, it would hurt too much. So endings do hurt. They don't always feel good. But facing a hard truth is why they hurt. But that's what helps us grow and it's not the same as being harmful. You see the difference? Hurting and being harmed are two different things.

When you harm someone, you're doing damage to them. Facing reality is not damaging. It may be hurtful, it may be hard, but it's not going to hurt you. Necessary endings almost always hurt, either us or someone else. But they don't harm. In fact, they're the key to health. It's important for us to understand that, especially when it comes to relationships. When God is leading you to a necessary ending, just always remember it may hurt, but it won't harm.

What are your truest priorities and values in life as a follower of Jesus Christ? What is non-Jesus-like in your life that could be pruned away? When you're 80 years old, what do you want to be able to say is true about your life? And if you look back on your life now, if you're under 80, that'll help you identify what really matters, what Christ has called you to, and start cutting away other stuff that may be good, but not the best, to free up your best energy for that which matters most. Your mission to love God, love people, serve the world.

Think about plants and rosebushes and such, and that is that if some of the branches are sick or diseased and they're not going to make it. And the reason you know, here's how you know, because you've tried. You have fertilized, you have nurtured, you have watered. You've done everything you know to do to get them healthy, but they're still not healthy. And there comes this moment of realization that I've done everything I know to do and it's not getting better.

I don't think more time, more water or fertilizer or anything I have the power to do is going to fix this situation. So you look reality in the face and you say I feel kind of bad about it because I tried hard, all my energy has been used to try to rescue this thing, but I know now I have a moment of realization that the wisest, best thing to do for the plant itself is to snip that sick or not-happening kind of branch. Then the bush or plant has even more life to pour into the healthy buds.

So we look at reality. A lot of times we just believe more time, give it more time. Well, sometimes time is needed, but time by itself is not going to fix a bad tooth or a hole in your roof or file your taxes for you or an unhealthy situation. When you've tried and tried and tried, remember hope is not a strategy. Wishful thinking is not as powerful as honesty, and honestly realizing that sometimes what's needed is a necessary ending.

Necessary endings is when you have branches or leaves or stalks that are dead. Dead ones just get in the way. The ones that are alive that you want to grow and flourish can't because they can't spread out, they can't reach up, they can't get the light they need. So to give healthy ones an unobstructed opportunity, you've got to prune away some dead stuff and there's stuff in all of our lives like that that's in the way of what God wants to do next because the dead thing that's supposed to be gone isn't gone because we're afraid of necessary endings.

So we've just got to be honest about this. There are three ways to do this, but we're afraid sometimes, or we like our plant the way it is, or we're afraid of shears, or I don't want to admit that that one isn't very healthy or whatever our reasons. If we don't learn to prune and give the pruning shears to the Lord God to help prune our lives, our lives will be at best mediocre, average and never flourishing and thriving in the way God intended us to.

Jesus taught about this exactly. John chapter 15, he says, "I'm the gardener and my Father is the gardener. I'm the great vine and my Father's the gardener." But the idea is that he says he's going to cut off every branch of mine that doesn't produce fruit. The whole point of your life is to be flourishing and healthy and alive and to bear fruit, and so therefore God the Father is going to prune the branches that don't bear fruit. So it's a reminder. Pruning is not punishment. It's preparation. It's for the purpose of bearing more fruit.

God wants to remove some things from our lives so that more can grow. Now, I could show you all over where Jesus continues this teaching. In some places it's kind of stark, like Luke chapter 9 verse 62. Jesus says it this way, "Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back, like you started saying I'm going to go with you, God, but then you look back, you're not ready for the kingdom of God at all. Don't keep turning around and going after this or that."

If you have a divided loyalty, Jesus is saying you need to put a necessary ending to that because I need you to follow me. Don't keep looking back behind you. He says it even stronger in Matthew 5 where he says you've got to deal with sin in your life. If your eye, even if it's your best eye, and it causes you to lust or it's leading you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. Now he's using exaggeration. It's called hyperbole, but he's trying to make a point that some things you don't just say oh well and make peace with it, you say it's got to stop. Some things have to end decisively.

This is what the Hebrews writer is saying in Hebrews 12. He says we're surrounded by this cloud of witnesses, so we've got to run our race and how do we do it? Strip off some stuff. Get rid of the sin that entangles you, the weight that's weighing you down. You've got to leave it behind, throw it off. And Paul says the same thing over in 2 Corinthians. He says when it comes to relationships, don't team up with those who are unbelievers.

How could if you're saying I'm going to be righteous with God, how can you be best friends and partners with someone who's in wickedness? Now you're going to have a mission to them, you're going to love them and try to lead them into the light, but how can light live with darkness? What harmony can Christ have with the devil? Well, the answer is it can't, so that's why don't be yoked together in a tight way with spiritual unbelievers. You've got to have pruning sometimes in your life.

Look at Colossians 3. Put to death the sinful earthly things that are lurking within you. You're responsible for identifying what's there. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don't be greedy. Because of these things the anger of God is coming. You used to do those things when your life was still part of the world, but now is a time to get rid of that stuff. Get rid of anger, rage, malice, bad behavior, slander, dirty language. All that stuff's got to come out of your life.

Don't lie to each other. Prune it out. Put on instead the new nature. You've got to grow and become who Christ meant you to be. Chisel away everything in your life that doesn't look like Jesus. Put away that earthly nature. You see how strong that is. Here's my favorite verse. 2 Corinthians 5:17. Paul says because of what Jesus has done, he's led you into a whole new way of living. And in light of that, anyone who now belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old has gone, the new is here. You're a new creation in Christ. That means the old, friends, something needs to go. It's time for a necessary ending.

Cody Custer: You know the task of saying no in our life can be a difficult thing. Saying no or the pruning of our personal preferences, habits and conveniences is a critical part of our ability to grow in Christ. Those aspects of our life that slow us down and cause us to be complacent. It doesn't mean it's easy or convenient, but we must prioritize it if we want to embrace who God has called us to be.

Remember Jesus said in John 15:5, "I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing." Friends, lean into Jesus. Ask him to open the eyes of your heart to bring to light areas of your life that need to end. Don't wait. Start today.

Well our thanks to Ben Cachiaras for helping us discover the freedom that comes when we let go of what holds us back and make room for what God wants to grow. Our thanks also to Acapella Ministries for their music of worship. To listen to today's program again, you can go to our website. It's free and available to download or stream any time at thechristianshour.org. It's also available at Oneplace, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.

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