So yesterday's post came out of a overwhelming sense of frustration. As I have had time to dwell on things, I know that what I said certainly was valid. There is a huge problem with Christians not loving each other. But there are other issues at play - that are intensified by this issue - and that intensify this issue. I started thinking about my own life, and if there was anyone that I was having trouble loving. Yes, there were people that fit in that category. A couple of them are people who have hurt me and those close to me so much that I will probably always struggle with loving them. I catch myself getting angry at them - for past wrongs - and I have to go to God and ask Him to help me. Sometimes, something will cause actual angry and rage to flare up at those people. It is in those times that I understand just how poorly I know how to love. I have all the justifications in my head for why I am allowed to feel that way. But then I think about the fact that Jesus loved Judas, and I have to slink off to my shame corner.
Today, though, a different person popped up into my head. It is a very dear friend - someone who has been a huge positive influence on my life and ministry. But I have been very unloving in my heart towards him. It has even gotten bad enough that seeing his face on Facebook will get my blood pressure rising. I took a moment and thought, "What could have possibly gotten things to that point?" And it all came down to the fact that he did something - actually, more correctly DIDN'T do something I wanted him to do. I don't know if he even knew what he was supposed to do. As a result, it has gotten to be like a poison in our relationship. And now, there is a huge wall built up there.
So, I thought about my options. I could write him and his friendship off forever and just keep building the wall. That is pretty dumb. I could act like everything is fine both to him and to myself. That hasn't been working yet. Or I could go to him and talk to him. yikes. I don't want to do that. I don't want to go to him and talk - he intimidates me and I would be terrified of him rejecting my apology. But, the Bible says we are supposed to do just that. In Matthew 5 we are told that if we remember that our brother has something against us, we should pause our worship to fix things. This is part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus flies in the face of human standards by setting His own standards. He had just talked about how the persecuted and poor and meek were the real winners. Now, He tells us, "Don't just go to the brother if YOU have something against HIM. Go to him even if HE has something against YOU." It was a foregone conclusion that we should go to them for our own pains, but He added to try to make peace with THEIR pains.
So I was already on shaky ground. James 5 talks about us confessing our sins to each other. The Lord's Prayer tells us that we have to forgive people. So I had to make things right - something I have begun trying to do. How it goes, I am not sure. But I have to obey and love my friend enough to try to make things right.
This is part of the problems that led to yesterday's post. We don't do things in Church. We don't go to each other and try to work out problems. We harbor them and let them fester and burn in our souls. Part of that is because communication is so bad - people don't know how to communicate at all - and part of it is because it is not modeled for people. When our church leaders do not go to people who they have wronged, or if they claim they have never wronged anyone, or if they won't go to people who have wronged them, then how are the members supposed to realize it is important? If the leadership is insulated and removed from the people, how can those members go to the leaders and express their own hurt? Love is missing - but so is communication, forgiveness, remorse, humility, and peacemaking.
It can paint a bleak picture, when we see how badly things are going. But we can make a change at least in our own lives. I am tired of seeing this in my own life. I want to fix things. I am tired of harboring stuff - I already battle being "an Eeyore" and being "cynical and sardonic." I don't need to contribute to that by keeping those poisons inside. I hope that you can say the same.
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts
Aug 22, 2007
Sep 25, 2006
Forgiveness
I decided to forego the Aladdin diatribe for this.
Forgiveness is an extremely difficult concept. You would think it would be easy. We do something wrong, and we want the other person to cleanse us of the offense. We want to know that we can make things right with that person. However, forgiveness ends up being something that it is hard to ACCEPT. I can understand if someone doesn’t want to accept an apology – that person really hurt us and we want to be able to stew for a while. But to not accept FORGIVENESS? That doesn’t make sense.
Maybe, our problem accepting forgiveness stems from our problem granting forgiveness. Think about it. How many times has someone come to you after hurting you and tried to apology, but you have to get in that one last mini lecture or hurtful look before trying to forgive them. Or maybe you have said that you will never never never forgive them ever. They hurt you just too badly. This may have been a parent who abused you or a friend who betrayed you – maybe a spouse who was unfaithful. To forgive them is just asking too much. It is letting them off the hook – or so it feels to us. We want them to hurt as much as we did.
Faith Hill’s song “Cry” addresses this. In it, she wants the person who jilted her to cry a little, show some pain. She wants to know that the other person suffered on a par with her. It is like they have to PROVE their remorse is real. Words are not good enough – there needs to be something concrete, some kind of physical proof. We want restitution.
This could be why it is so hard for us to understand and accept the concept of being forgiven. We are so used to making others jump through hoops that we expect to have to jump ourselves. And when it comes to God’s forgiveness, well He HAS TO have some kind of punishment for those sins we committed. When the Bible says that all of our sins are forgiven, we don’t take that at face value. Instead, we try to convince God that we are really really sorry. And we will take these fifty steps to make sure it never happens again. And, even after all of that, we still don’t believe Him. So we sit there crippled by the sins we have been toting around.
The really ironic and sad thing is that those sins are gone. God isn’t holding them against us. He has already forgiven us – regardless of our opinion on the matter. He blotted them out, threw them as far away as East from West, remembered them no more. And on top of that, He covered us with Christ’s righteousness. So when He looks at us, He sees a holy person. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be comical – watching a person that is dressed like a king staggering around under the weight of sin’s imagined and removed burden. God already took that big old sack of garbage off of us and tossed it away when we accepted Jesus in our hearts – we just refuse to believe it.
There is a phenomenon in people who lose limbs called “phantom pains.” This is where they feel pain in the body part that is gone. I remember reading the biography of Dave Dravecky – and he talked about how he was in agony for a long time with pains in his hand. Only he didn’t have a hand on that arm. But it was the body trying to re-orient itself. We kind of act like that with the burden of sin – we carry around a phantom burden on our backs, wear phantom leg irons, sit behind phantom prison bars. We are completely blind to the fact that Christ shattered all of those things.
Isaiah 61:1 is obviously a very dear verse to my heart – and to the heart of Defender Ministries. It shows us clearly that the Gospel is designed to remove the burden of sin, fling open the prisons, free the captives, heal the crippled. The message of the Gospel is FREEDOM. This isn’t freedom to live like a hellion. It is freedom from the bondage of sin that has imprisoned mankind since the Fall. We are FREE. I always get the picture of some huge warrior breaking into a prison – like the ones in “Count of Monte Cristo” or “Mask of Zorro.” He comes in with a sword, a ring of keys, and a torch. He has used the sword to defeat the guards. He takes the keys and fling open the cells. And then he takes the torch and lights all the candles to show the escape route. “FOLLOW ME, YOU PRISONERS OF EVIL! FOLLOW ME TO YOUR FREEDOM!” He runs out the front door – and there is no one behind him.
The prisoners all stayed in their cells. “This freedom can’t be for me – I’m beyond redemption,” one mopes. Another cries out, “Oh, if only I could be free from these chains like the others.” A third angrily shouts, “I’m sure that this is just a trick. That warrior is outside waiting to trounce me.” (Good vocab for prisoners.) Meanwhile, the warrior is just shaking his head.
Forgiveness is an extremely difficult concept. You would think it would be easy. We do something wrong, and we want the other person to cleanse us of the offense. We want to know that we can make things right with that person. However, forgiveness ends up being something that it is hard to ACCEPT. I can understand if someone doesn’t want to accept an apology – that person really hurt us and we want to be able to stew for a while. But to not accept FORGIVENESS? That doesn’t make sense.
Maybe, our problem accepting forgiveness stems from our problem granting forgiveness. Think about it. How many times has someone come to you after hurting you and tried to apology, but you have to get in that one last mini lecture or hurtful look before trying to forgive them. Or maybe you have said that you will never never never forgive them ever. They hurt you just too badly. This may have been a parent who abused you or a friend who betrayed you – maybe a spouse who was unfaithful. To forgive them is just asking too much. It is letting them off the hook – or so it feels to us. We want them to hurt as much as we did.
Faith Hill’s song “Cry” addresses this. In it, she wants the person who jilted her to cry a little, show some pain. She wants to know that the other person suffered on a par with her. It is like they have to PROVE their remorse is real. Words are not good enough – there needs to be something concrete, some kind of physical proof. We want restitution.
This could be why it is so hard for us to understand and accept the concept of being forgiven. We are so used to making others jump through hoops that we expect to have to jump ourselves. And when it comes to God’s forgiveness, well He HAS TO have some kind of punishment for those sins we committed. When the Bible says that all of our sins are forgiven, we don’t take that at face value. Instead, we try to convince God that we are really really sorry. And we will take these fifty steps to make sure it never happens again. And, even after all of that, we still don’t believe Him. So we sit there crippled by the sins we have been toting around.
The really ironic and sad thing is that those sins are gone. God isn’t holding them against us. He has already forgiven us – regardless of our opinion on the matter. He blotted them out, threw them as far away as East from West, remembered them no more. And on top of that, He covered us with Christ’s righteousness. So when He looks at us, He sees a holy person. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be comical – watching a person that is dressed like a king staggering around under the weight of sin’s imagined and removed burden. God already took that big old sack of garbage off of us and tossed it away when we accepted Jesus in our hearts – we just refuse to believe it.
There is a phenomenon in people who lose limbs called “phantom pains.” This is where they feel pain in the body part that is gone. I remember reading the biography of Dave Dravecky – and he talked about how he was in agony for a long time with pains in his hand. Only he didn’t have a hand on that arm. But it was the body trying to re-orient itself. We kind of act like that with the burden of sin – we carry around a phantom burden on our backs, wear phantom leg irons, sit behind phantom prison bars. We are completely blind to the fact that Christ shattered all of those things.
Isaiah 61:1 is obviously a very dear verse to my heart – and to the heart of Defender Ministries. It shows us clearly that the Gospel is designed to remove the burden of sin, fling open the prisons, free the captives, heal the crippled. The message of the Gospel is FREEDOM. This isn’t freedom to live like a hellion. It is freedom from the bondage of sin that has imprisoned mankind since the Fall. We are FREE. I always get the picture of some huge warrior breaking into a prison – like the ones in “Count of Monte Cristo” or “Mask of Zorro.” He comes in with a sword, a ring of keys, and a torch. He has used the sword to defeat the guards. He takes the keys and fling open the cells. And then he takes the torch and lights all the candles to show the escape route. “FOLLOW ME, YOU PRISONERS OF EVIL! FOLLOW ME TO YOUR FREEDOM!” He runs out the front door – and there is no one behind him.
The prisoners all stayed in their cells. “This freedom can’t be for me – I’m beyond redemption,” one mopes. Another cries out, “Oh, if only I could be free from these chains like the others.” A third angrily shouts, “I’m sure that this is just a trick. That warrior is outside waiting to trounce me.” (Good vocab for prisoners.) Meanwhile, the warrior is just shaking his head.
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