Forgiveness

This Present Moment

“Leave the broken, irreversible past in God’s hands, and step out into the invincible future with him.” – Oswald Chambers

I heard someone say, “A truly happy person is someone who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.” Can we live fully in the present moment even it’s not what we planned? Do we spend too much time in the past or the future and miss engaging with the now? What can we do to change that?

The Past

We can all look at our past and find things we don’t like. Things we said. Things we did. Things that happened to us that changed the trajectory of our lives: Hurts, rejection, unresolved relationships.

Wise counselors tell us to acknowledge that these things are painful, but unchangeable. We can’t redo life. We can, though, forgive those who have hurt us. And we can confess our own mistakes and sins and receive God’s forgiveness. When we do that, we will feel that a weight has been taken away and this present life is refreshed.

The Future

When we look ahead, we can fall into worry far too easily, anticipating what could possibly happen that will be hard. And there will be those things. But that’s what the life of faith is all about: Trusting God even when we don’t understand. Trusting him because we know his character is good, kind, loving, powerful, just. The future is full of his promises, his presence, and his protection. Let’s choose to believe that!

The Present

When we let go of the past and trust God for the future, we will be fully alive to today. We can count on it!

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – Romans 15:13

by

Somebody doesn’t like me.

“You can love without agreeing with someone. You can disagree without hating them.” – Tim Keller

There are many reasons someone might be critical of us: They disagree with our decisions. They feel hurt by something we said or did. They are of a different political persuasion than we are. Or there is just a conflict between two differing personalities.

Getting others to like us is not the primary goal of life. Not everyone liked Jesus. Some hated him enough to hire witnesses to lie about him so he would be sentenced to die. Not everyone liked King David, or Joseph, or Daniel. . .

So what do we do when someone expresses anger toward us or just doesn’t like us?

If we have hurt them, we should seek forgiveness. Sometimes we are the forgiver and sometimes the forgiven, often it’s both: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

If it’s a difference of opinion about lifestyle, leadership, or politics, we should agree to disagree and continue in a respectful relationship: “. . . let’s stop condemning each other. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall” (Romans 14:13).

If these approaches don’t bring peace, we should give it all to God and move on. “Never pay back evil with more evil. . . Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone” (Romans 12:17-18).

We should try to live in harmony with others, especially with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should address conflicts, pray for one another, and grow in our relationship with God. He is the one we want to please the most.

“Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” – 1 Peter 3:8

by

Need grace?

“Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.” – John Stott

I’ve heard it said the Old Testament is about law and the New Testament is about grace. Funny, though, but the more I read the Old Testament, the more I see grace there, too. Example:

After King Hezekiah restored the temple (2 Chronicles 30), he called the people to come to celebrate Passover. It wasn’t in the right month. Would God allow that? There were those who had not properly consecrated themselves. What to do? God had struck people dead for what seemed like lesser offenses than these.

Hezekiah prayed, asking God to accept the people as they were – sinful, unsure, but willing to come back to him. God heard and answered that prayer, and a great celebration of Passover occurred with much repentance and rejoicing. God, in his amazing grace, opened the door to the undeserving, the unwashed, and the wayward. Maybe he saw their hearts. Maybe he just wanted them back. But it was pure grace.

This may be a foreshadowing of the grace that would come in Jesus – grace that would allow us to be made clean enough to approach him without ceremonial washings and ritual – just to come as we are with hearts full of repentance, offering him ourselves and our gifts, yielding to his will for our lives.

It also reminds me that we need to extend grace to others. We receive it freely from God’s hand. Why, then, would we withhold forgiveness or second chances or new starts to anyone around us? Knowing God, following Jesus – it’s all about grace!

“He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,” – 2 Timothy 1:9

by

Living and Dying

“What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.” – John Piper

Jesus lived an exemplary life on earth. We learn so much by looking in on his interactions with all kinds of people – the wise and the uneducated, the poor and the rich, the strong and the weak, the young and the old. He showed us how to live.

He also showed us how to die.

His death was for the redemption of the world, but he did die. And his deathbed was a cross. He had last wishes, last words, and last acts. What did he model for us?

He cared about those he was leaving behind. He looked down from the cross and saw his mother with her heart breaking. He also saw his disciple John and asked him to take care of Mary as if she were his own mother. Jesus was suffering unspeakably, but remembered the pain his death would bring to others.

He forgave those who hurt him. The soldiers had whipped him, mocked him, driven nails through his hands and feet. In spite of all that, Jesus prayed for their forgiveness.

He prayed. While he was on the cross, he was communing with the Father, and that connection was so intense that he was desperate when God temporarily turned away from him. He could not bear being separated from his Father in Heaven.

If this was the way Jesus chose to deal with his dying day, it might also be a formula for us – for living and for dying: Caring about others, forgiving those who’ve hurt us, and talking to God.

“Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” – 1 John 2:6

by

The Judge

“If you want to see what judgment looks like, go to the cross. If you want to see what love looks like, go to the cross.” – D.A. Carson

I went to court once just as support for a friend who was fighting against a person who reneged on a contract. It seemed obvious to us that the law was on her side. It should be a slam dunk.

But, as we walked into the courtroom, I realized that the matter now was entirely out of her control. The judge’s ruling would be what she would have to live with. Her fate was in his hands.

I have to admit that created some stress in me. Then I thought about the fact that Jesus is returning someday to judge the world. It won’t be enough to have lived a pretty good life. None us can live up to what is required in the heavenly court.

There is a way to avoid that judgment: Settle out of court! Jesus invites us to come to him now so we can know him as Savior and then not have to face him as judge. Our record will be clean because he will have paid our penalty. Those who choose not to accept Jesus’s payment in this life will stand before him as Judge where opinions, excuses, and apologies won’t make a difference.

Take care of the charges against you while you can because once the Judge enters the room, it’s out of your hands. And his decision will be final. No arguing, no appeals. It will just be as it is – forever.

“It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” – Romans 8:33a-34

by

Patient and Kind

“There is no termination date on my commitment to you. You can’t get rid of my grace to you. You can’t outrun my mercy. You can’t evade my goodness.” – Dane Ortland

A friend once told me about her adult son who was always getting into trouble, mostly related to his penchant for alcohol. One time he came to her with yet another problem and said, “I bet you wish I’d never been born.” She told me that story with tears in her eyes, not because of the problems he caused, but because he could even think she would ever stop loving him.

God’s like that. No matter how much trouble we are, we are his, and he wants us to be close.

A friend once likened God’s relationship to us as that of a human trying to housetrain a puppy. When the puppy doesn’t make it to the papers, does a good master kick him for missing the mark? No, he picks him up and moves him to the papers. After awhile, the pup, wanting to please his master, begins to understand and do the right thing.

Once we’re adopted into God’s family, we are his – forever. If we keep falling into the same sin, he still loves us. If we fail to keep our promises to him, he still keeps his promises to us. He helps us get back up when we fall. Even if we run from him, he chases us to bring us back – just like a master would do with a runaway puppy!

And that kind of love makes us want to return to him. The thing we must never think is that he no longer wants us back. Our Master will never turn away one who wants to please him.

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” – Exodus 34:6b

by

Easter changes everything.

“If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, . . . then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption.” – Josh McDowell

Leviticus teaches about unintentional sins – things people do that hurt or damage someone else or offend God, and they don’t even know they’d done it. When they realize their sin, they’re held responsible for making it right (Leviticus 5:17). And that meant actually taking an animal to the priest to be sacrificed to pay for the sin committed. Cumbersome. Messy. Expensive. Time-consuming. Embarrassing. Sin, even if unintentional, has terrible consequences!

Why don’t we handle guilt that way anymore? Because we don’t have to! Jesus came as the one-time-only sacrifice for the sins of the world (Hebrews 10:10b). We still hurt people or wrong them in many ways. We still offend God. But since Jesus came to die for us, we no longer have to bear our own sin. He took it all on himself on the cross. Since his resurrection that very first Easter Sunday, we simply believe that Jesus gave his life for us and confess our sinfulness to him. He forgives, cleanses, and makes us into new creatures able and willing to follow him.

What then? We worship him by giving ourselves and our bodies back to him in complete surrender to his will. “ I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). He gave his body for us. We give ours to his service.

That’s why we’re thankful, why we worship, why we can live without guilt or regret. Jesus makes all things new!

” . . . if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” – Romans 10:9b

by

Transparency

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.” – George MacDonald

Have you noticed that relationships go better if we can be honest about who we are and what we think? The apostle John addresses this issue, but we have to look carefully to see it: “. . . if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

Walking in the light means we aren’t hiding anything. We’re cleansed from our sin and, therefore, have nothing to cover up. We can be ourselves. We can be transparent and honest. The hard relationships are those where there are topics we can’t talk about or sins and weaknesses we want to keep secret. So how do we get to the point of having the kind of relationship John describes as fellowship?

Here’s what he says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).

If we regret things, past or present, we are acknowledging the truth: We have sinned.

And there a solution to that: Confess and receive God’s forgiveness.

The rest of the verse describes what follows: We are made clean. It’s as if John is telling us to confess the sins we know about and we will be cleansed from the ones we don’t know. God makes us clean, past, present, and future, through the blood of Jesus.

And the result? We walk in the light – meaning we can live easily in transparency and truth.

Only then can we experience true fellowship, deep friendship, committed love. Isn’t that what we all want?

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.” – Proverbs 10:9

by

Getting to Know Him

“There is no peace like the peace of those whose minds are possessed with full assurance that they have known God, and God has known them, and that this relationship guarantees God’s favor to them in life, through death and on for ever.” – J. I. Packer

What does God feel when he looks at you? Approval? Frustration? Does thinking about that help you grow spiritually? Probably not. I propose that our personal and spiritual growth is not so much about what God sees when he looks at us as it is about what we see when we look at him.

If we focus on earning God’s approval, we try self-improvement schemes: looking good, behaving well, getting over bad habits, and trying to love everyone! That’s a lot of work and we’ll never be better people just by trying harder.

The first step, of course, is accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow him. After that, it’s about learning to know God – as he reveals himself in the Bible, in times of prayer, and through wise and mature Christian teachers and writers. When we see his heart, we realize he’s pleased with us already. He knows we will fail and, when we turn to him, he forgives every time. And when he does, he begins to change us. It’s his work, not ours.

So instead of anxiously trying to earn God’s approval, let’s just get to know him. Most of us have some incorrect perceptions of him that need to be fixed. So let’s put our energy into learning who he is and responding to his heart. When we know him, we will love him, and our efforts to please him will be out of love, not fear.

 “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness . . .” – Exodus 34:4

by

Where did he go?

“No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectation is from other things, nothing but disappointment awaits us.” – Hannah Whitall Smith

God doesn’t impose himself on us. At times, the people of Israel rejected him and turned to idol worship. God repeatedly called them back, but they wouldn’t listen. So he said, “I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face and, in their distress, earnestly seek me” (Hosea 5:15). We might paraphrase it this way: “I’m going back home until you understand how much you need me.”

Sometimes God seems far away even when we go to church, sing the songs, and take communion. Hosea says something about that, too: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” The people of Israel were doing many right things like going to the temple and offering sacrifices. But outward actions didn’t change their hearts or keep them from following other “gods”.

God’s greatest desire is for us to know and love him – above everything and anyone else. Our true devotion is more important to him than ceremonial actions. I’ve found that if I am missing a sense of God’s presence in my life, I soften my heart and ask him to come back. With that invitation, he usually begins to work with me and makes himself known again.

Does he seem far away right now? Tell him you miss him. You love him. You want to sense his presence. He’ll come.

“For the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn his face from you if you return to him.” – 2 Chronicles 30:9b