Forgiveness

So, how do we do this whole forgiveness thing? I ask because, like many of you, I really need to know. I ask because I believe that, somehow, the quality of my relationship with Jesus Christ is linked to my relationship to those around me. If I have problems giving and receiving forgiveness with those around me, might I not have problems receiving and understanding forgiveness and restoration through Jesus Christ for myself?

We pray Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Do we believe that? Do we forgive others as though our own forgiveness depended on it?

I think much of the time we just don’t know how to get started. Most of the time, we ask forgiveness for things we do accidentally. Those are easy. We trip and drop a plate at a friend’s dinner party breaking a piece of their china. Our apology is out almost before the plate hits the floor. We offer to buy another one. We go to the store and look for the same pattern, and, even though we are shocked by the price when we find it, we order a new one and take it to our friend because we want to restore the relationship.

However, it seems that we find it hardest to confess our sins when they are purposefully committed against someone else. That might be because they were done with intention. We meant to hurt. We meant to embarrass. We wanted to cause pain. It is just that we don’t want to admit that we are the kind of person who could do those things intentionally.

Mark 7:21-23 says, For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these things come from within, and defile the man. It is difficult for us to admit that all these things flow out of our own heart. It is so much more comfortable to blame them on any outside influence. We just don’t want to admit that those things are part of the way we are.

When we ask forgiveness we admit that this is our nature. We show we need forgiveness and regeneration. It is the difference from saying we made a “mistake” and saying we have committed a sin, a hurtful act. Forgiveness cannot begin until we know that we are in need of redemption. However, forgiveness is completed when we accept redemption and restoration through Jesus Christ.

Pastor Craig

Against the Anger of My Foes

Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me. Psalm 138

I hope you took time to read the verse above slowly. Probably the first thing you felt was protection. I hope so. The Psalm is telling you that even in the midst of your crisis God’s protective hand is upon you, saving you.

I hope you also noticed exactly what God’s hand is against – the anger of your enemies. I don’t want to overstate the case here, but I think we often view God as having sides and because we count ourselves among the righteous, that means God is opposed to those who stand opposed to us. We can find many Psalms that speak about God in more aggressive ways concerning our enemies. However, this one seems to speak against the anger of our foes.

The word is about frustrating the plans some may have to harm us, to bring disgrace on the name of our God through the negation of his blessings to us. The verse from Psalm 138 speaks not so much against our enemies as against their plans for us, because, as hard as it may be for us to grasp, God loves those who oppose us too.

Yes, that can be an uncomfortable realization. God loves our enemies. He may not love what they do to us, what they say about us, or how they might work to nullify his purposes in our life, but he loves them. Why does God call us to love and forgive our enemies? Because that is what he does with them!

Imagine that person you have been at war with for years, the person that, regardless of the issue, the two of you are on opposite sides. God loves that person and wants to work in their life to bring blessings and peace. This may mean the two of you begin to agree on things, but it may not. God will work in their life to bring about his own purposes and glory, not just to make your life easier.

So, the next time you find yourself in a friend – foe situation, remember, your foe may still be God’s friend. Love and forgive them because God himself has done that very same thing for them as well.

Pastor Craig

Tagging

Conservative-Liberal:

These two words are getting a lot of press these days, most of it bad. Conservatives are reactionary, calling “us” back to traditional values, some of which we are more than happy to leave behind. Hear conservative, think closed minded, inflexible, harsh, lacking in grace and compassion, fundamentalist.

Liberals are clueless, calling us to jump boldly into the dark with no idea as to what is out there. Hear liberal, think groundless, lack of structure, no moorings, not based on fact, absence of rules, without reason or rational thought.

I know that each of those terms have other meanings as well, fortunately, most of them less inflammatory. However, in our current political, socio-economic, and religious context, the terms themselves are akin to racial slurs, something used to brand a person in a particular context without getting to know anything whatsoever about them.

I would like to propose a new phrase. One we all know. One we can all agree on, conservative and liberal. One that is Gospel based.

Protestant Liberality – When we use the phrase, let’s get past our idea of tithes and offerings though. Let’s use it in the context of grace, missions, being open and humble. In so doing, we make our space a place for people to ask questions. We recognize that some of those questions will have no answers. We promise that we will listen before we answer. We promise that our answer will be filled with the same grace we experienced first in Jesus Christ.

Most people are looking for a place to ask questions, a place they can rest comfortably even if they do not get all the answers, learn new questions, and still be accepted by others within the faith community. Liberality recognizes the gap between what we, humanly, can know and the reality of our God. We recognize our knowing as coming up short, that while we are fully known, in this life we cannot know fully. 

Our journey of faith takes us to the borders of knowing where we look across the gap in hopes of seeing something of God. This is what Moses experienced when he asked permission to gaze upon God’s glory, only to be granted the slightest glimpse of his Creator’s back. That gaze empowered his faith anew, connecting head, heart, and hands in ministry to the people of Israel.

Just think what might happen if we put aside all our ready-made answers for just a moment, recognizing our inability to define God as we would like and our necessity to know him as he is.

 Pastor Craig

Forgiveness

How do we forgive one another? How do we forgive ourselves? How do receive forgiveness? What does that even mean?

Someone commented the other day that forgiveness meant forgetting an offense ever occurred. I disagree with that comment. Forgiveness is much more than losing your long term memory. Forgiveness is about knowing exactly what the other person has done and and deciding not to hold them to account.

Isaiah 43:25 says, I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions , for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. The idea here is not one of forgetfulness. God does not forget what we have done. God CHOOSES not to bring those transgression up, not to throw them in our face. God chooses not to recite our list of wrongs over and over again.

The reciting and keeping a list of wrongs is the biggest obstacle we have when it comes to forgiving others. Many times we may want the relationship to be restored but we simply can't get past the list in our head. We try to forget it entirely, but there seems to be a switch or button that always replays the list for us once again. That is why it cannot be about forgetting. It must be about choosing not to hold the other accountable. It is about setting the offender free and, in so doing, freeing ourselves.

But, how do we forgive ourselves when we are the offender? We tend to bring up our own faults and torture ourselves with them. We find it far more difficult to "not remember" our own offenses than the offenses of others.

The doctor in the video is trying to gain forgiveness. He cannot forgive himself for what he has done. Is it possible to receive forgiveness from another if one cannot forgive himself? Will it matter how many times someone else says, Don't worry about it. It's alright, if something inside of us continues our level of anxiety and says NO, it's not alright!

The Gospel is about forgiveness. It is about living as forgiven people. How is that possible if we cannot forgive ourselves. We are not forgiven until that most harsh of taskmasters is satisfied, the taskmaster of self.

The good news of the cross is not limited to a restored relationship with our Creator. It is also about being given a new view of ourselves. We are indeed forgiven people. God has restored to us a life of purpose and taken from us the life of failure. The old things have passed away. In Christ, all things have become new.

My Summer Vacation

In just a couple weeks most of our kids will be back to school. I don’t know if this is still something grade school children and youth do at the beginning of the term, but it certainly was a ritual when I was growing up so long ago. It was the writing of the What I Did on My Summer Vacation essay.

Let me preface this by saying I grew up in a small North Georgia town with one older sister. My parents had moved there from Wisconsin in time for me to start Kindergarten and my sister to start first grade. This meant all our relatives were, literally, a thousand miles away. So, guess what our summer vacation was each and every summer?

Yes, you would be correct. We travelled the long, non-interstate route to Wisconsin to visit both sets of grandparents in Merrill, Wisconsin and to help my paternal grandparents do the backbreaking work of hauling in enough hay to last through the Wisconsin winter on their dairy farm.

My essay was the same each and every year. Oh, there were highlights – the summer I got to start driving the tractor; the summer my cousin and I unloaded the whole trailer of bales by ourselves (a feat my grandfather praised us for even though I am sure he had to restack many of those bales we just couldn’t seem to get in there tight enough); playing my Mother’s old 78’s on the record player she used to have at my other Grandmother’s and learning to appreciate the music of the 40’s and 50’s which I still dearly love; learning to ride a bike on the farm; going to summer concerts by the town band at the local band shell; getting a new boomerang that sailed out over the local lake and did not come back!

Other kids went to Disneyland or the new and closer Disneyworld. I went to Wisconsin – land of Holsteins and cheese. Each and every summer, this is what we did, that is until my Grandmother got sick and could no longer help my Grandfather. The farm was sold. They kept a small portion of it and built a house there. Now I watched someone else go and come from that farm house, but they were city folks and didn’t really know much about dairy farming.

We did finally head to new destinations. We went out West, with Grandparents in tow, to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. We went up the East coast to Cape Cod. And, finally, yes finally, I got to go to Disneyworld. It was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but for all the excitement, it couldn’t beat either of my Grandparent’s houses for it was there that I learned how to drive a tractor, ride a bike, appreciate music, and live in relationships even if throwing a boomerang is still not something I have mastered.

It was there I learned that I was loved and could be forgiven, something I only found out later that many people never realize. It was this love that made it so easy to understand the love and forgiveness of God for me in Jesus Christ because I had already seen unconditional love everyday of my life through my parents and grandparents. Sure, the other destinations of my classmates could entertain, but they all fell short of teaching the things that made me who I am today.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness, through the eyes of Robinson Crusoe – Upon debating the foolish choices which, eventually, would lead to him spending years alone on an island, Robinson Crusoe wrote in his journal: As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my thoughts; and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at among the neighbors, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and mother only but even everybody else; from whence I have since often observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases, that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which can only make them esteemed wise men.

What is your sin? Oh, don’t worry. I’m not asking you to come by the office for confession. I’m asking you to consider, as is the case for some of our sins, the passion with which you pursued the transgression as opposed to the timidity with which you approached owning up to it as transgression.

We run towards that which makes us unclean and flee the very source of cleanliness. Maybe that is what original sin is about.

Christ is never embarrassed to call us brother or sister. We are the ones ashamed to claim the title. The Father was more than eager to claim The Prodigal as his son! It was the son who was reluctant to return AS A SON to his father.

Our Heavenly Father stands with open arms and tears streaming down his face waiting for us to return. The tears are not over what we have done but, rather, because we will not run to Him, the only one who can possibly fix it, with all our strength and all our being immediately upon committing the transgression! Instead of the blessings of the Kingdom we dwell in loneliness on the island with Robinson Crusoe waiting for the fellowship and community our Heavenly Father is more than willing to give.

Are you ready to come home? Have you spent enough time alone on the island? Run to the Father who will grant you that perfect fellowship. He will restore you and your relationships if you will only leave the foolishness of Robinson Crusoe behind and become wise!

Pastor Craig