Forgiving and being forgiven...

So, last week we investigated how prayer, prayer and more prayer was a window into our soul and a mechanism for us to open our hearts and minds to God’s grace. Through prayer, we can reveal our innermost thoughts to God, although he already knows us inside out as nothing is really hidden from him. However God delights in our offering of our lives, however small, because it reveals our faith… it reveals how much we are prepared to trust that God knows how to work through our issues.

This week we will focus on forgiveness. We find it hard to offer forgiveness to others as it is not our natural state. When we are wronged, we want some form of justice so that we can alleviate the offence we feel. Life gets so complicated sometimes, but we can make conscious choices in the season of Lent to stop doing those things that harm us, particularly in choosing not to forgive. We often echo what the apostle Paul wrote about when he states that he wrestles with his own sense of guilt when he finds that he does the things he ought not to do, yet neglect’s the thing he ought to do. This is the same Paul who took the Gospel to the Mediterranean, who was shipwrecked and rescued and received such a revelation of God, that he was blinded by the glorious light of his son Jesus… even after all of this, he struggled with the everyday complications of life.

Sin in our lives is identified when we come up against God’s authority and order for our lives. Reading the Bible and seeking the heart of God through prayer helps to highlight the things in our lives that need change. Asking the spirit to break the chains that bind us is a useful exercise for Lent. As we give up our favourite chocolate bar so that we can focus on spiritual matters leading up to Easter, it is important to allow God in to do his work. Sometime we hold on to emotional hurt and blockages that prevent us from receiving the fullness of Christ’s blessing for our lives because we would rather box up the pain and store it in our emotional attic than let God in to deal with it. It is often too painful for us to return there… He’ll keep knocking, but we have to open the door (Rev 3: 20).

Galatians 6 is a description of the type of community that holds each other accountable to one another. Encouraging us to help each other out, sharing our burdens and recognising what our responsibilities towards each other are. It also talks about our integrity at work and our challenge to live to honour God with our lives… to honour the spirit so that we might receive the promise of eternal life.

God is a master of growing good stuff from tricky situations. I think of Paul and Silas trapped in prison, awaiting justice and befriending the jailer and prisoners, talking to them of the things of God. Then an earthquake shakes the prison to the foundations. The jailer fears for his own life. If the prisoners have escaped, their family business would be ruined. Paul calls out to him, reassures him, and he and his entire household are saved. For both Paul and the jailer, they receive the blessing that God had prepared for them by being faithfully obedient in the time and place that they found themselves… Paul was being obedient to God in spreading the 'Good News' of Jesus Christ, while the Jailer and his family recognised their sin and asked God to forgive them. Paul is later released and the Jailers family have the gift of an eternal life. (Acts 16: 16-40)

There is always something to learn from the things in our lives that need change. Working through things like anger or irritability can be useful for all of our lives, our relationships and our work, not just the spiritual. God knows this. If we can be more patient, we become better listeners. Becoming better listeners means we can hear the need beyond the words (reading body-language; observing emotion)… we can offer counsel. Offering counsel builds trust in each other; it builds community; it builds accountability; it develops fellowship; it leads to faith. The more we encounter this process in our lives, the more we are able to see the value of this special spiritual experience, even when it is hard and it makes no sense what so ever. Always with God, we can look back and see that his hand has never left us (1 Peter 1: 6-7).

This is what Paul talks about when he mentions about his trouble with sin. He recognised most of all that when the law was applied to his character and behaviour, there were things that were not holy in his life. As he battled with these things under the weight of the law, he felt it was impossible to break out from his condition. Only God’s grace through the actions of his son Jesus, could release him from the captivity of sin.

However, the devil will seek ever more devious way’s to deceive us as we press in with God. God strengthens us when we read his word in the Bible and find truth for our lives; he empowers us by being filled with the Holy Spirit to inspire our thought and deed; and he grows his church through our fellowship with one another. The devil’s ruse has always been; ‘Did God say…?’ This is a question that we begin to explore with our intellect and our action. If we are not grounded in God’s truth through his word, we can be easily de-railed by distraction. We can be led into all types of activity where we think that we won’t get found out! We can ignore the spirit’s guidance sometimes because the draw of what we want is greater than our self control. However, our faith is in an all knowing God. It grieves him to think that we would harm ourselves by poor counsel or a lack of wisdom. He wants to help (Hebrews 4: 12 – 16).

God loves us unconditionally. He is not easily shocked. He already knows of our worst sin, yet he would send his son Jesus all over again if we were the only one left to be saved from our sin. We are charged to hate the sin is us and grow in the strength that we can gain through the renewal of our mind by the grace of God. We are forgiven people so we need to learn to forgive others… Jesus says that we should forgive 70 times 7, which would be 490 times. If we wanted a nominal amount of forgiveness we had to offer before we could get our revenge, then this would be it. However, if think of forgiveness in this way, we have missed the point. When we fail to forgive that person for doing that 'thing', perhaps God might be looking to point to areas in our own life where we have caused offence but we had failed to notice! (Matthew18: 21 – 35)

We can carry around un-forgiveness that can develop hatred and resentment; foster an expectation of failure or settling for second best. This rob’s us of our very humanity when we become ‘closed’ in heart and mind and cannot feel love or show compassion to those in need. We need to learn to give these things to God in order to receive the Joy of forgiveness and the peace that comes from repentance as this leads to faith. That again is the essence of Lent.