Category: forgiveness

Dealing with Arguers

“Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy”

Hebrews 12:14, TNIV

 

For me personally, someone in my face can be nasty and irritating.  It seems I can never say enough.  I simply don’t get any sense of having “convinced” them of my position or views.  I maintain composure (I try, anyway) and then ignite when its all over.

Inevitably, I start playing the whole ugly argument over and over.  Often, if I feel quite vulnerable, I will enlist my dear wife’s availability.  She comes to my side, where I find the support I wanted.

Intense arguments can derail me from so much.  Going to scripture in this frame of mind does me no good at all.  When I’m in this place, prayer becomes unplugged (kind of like my exercise “treadmill.”)  I sit in my chair and simmer, and occasionally boil over.

What do I need most?

  • Humility
  • Gentleness, and sensitivity
  • Kindness  
  • Pre-planning, or pre-alignment of my heart
  • A sense of humor
  • Renunciation of my “rights” and privileges

 

A lot of things could be added to my quick list, that would be helpful.  Making cookies, or doing new chores also sort out things.  If the issue is more mountain than molehill, find your way to an elder or a pastor.  But whatever you do, it’s best to keep moving.  So much is working to solidify you in one place.  It’s like walking through wet cement! (It’s best not to linger too long, in one place.)

Know this though.  Being in an argument or conflict is not sin.  They may disturb us, but we don’t necessarily have to sin.  Jesus had some whoppers in His day.  He walked into these conflagrations without a diminishing of peace or joy.  He walked out of them the same way.  He can teach us, by showing us how He did it.

Just one more thing (I’m trying hard to write a essay here.)  You don’t hear or read it very often–but, we all are models and examples to someone else.  Our children, neighbors, friends, the bank teller and our gym instructor.  Not that everyone knows of our issue, our frustration.  But that our lives are filled with a “joyous humility.”  I think what hurts me most is that I fear my witness or testimony has been damaged by my words and actions.

God is God of my everything.  He knows what happened.  He knows me, and knows them.  The sin does not impede His vision of you.  When he was on earth, he was never disturbed by any confict.  Today, he is the same.  Disputing with someone else– no problem.  He doesn’t get loose and cut you down in embarassment.  Brilliantly and lovingly, He absorbs all that concerns you.  He is more gentle than you know and kinder than any man, or woman. 

A Clear Case of Forgiveness

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When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Luke 7:42, ESV

 We are all in debt.  Some owe $10,000.  Others owe $500,000.  But we are all in debt.  And believe me, things are pretty grim.  Many lament our huge national debt, they have figured out that each individual owes thousands of dollars.  It seems very unfair that so much is owed by just a single person.  However, our debt with God and His law is far beyond our ability to pay.

The Father’s intention and focus is to forgive us, it may seem confusing, but He has kicked off a plan that leads to total and comprehensive forgiveness for anyone who will simply believe.  It’s amazing, and fantastical, but He has decided to forgive our debt.  It doesn’t matter in the slightest what we have done.  We may be a mass murdering Satanist, but when we turn at Him, everything is forgiven and then quickly forgotten.

Everyone who looks to Him, and clings to Him, has their debt forgiven.  The debt has been cancelled, and we have been released completely.  There is no liability, nothing is incurred.  We have been incredibily released.  Absolutely forgiven.  There can be no rebuttal.  No one can state otherwise.

There is one solitary issue that remains, although many would argue about its significance.  That issue is reciprocal love.  In your heart of hearts, you fully know your debt.  And you understand its implications.  The scripture states that you will love according to your forgiven debt.  If you’ve been forgiven much, you will love much.

The degree and severity of your iniquity can be forgiven.  But love should fill the vacancy.  He looks and anticipates your response to His offer.  But love really should be your only response.  We love Him and the amazing things He has set in motion.  We should be astounded at His incredibly deep generosity.  Especially when it concerns us so profoundly.

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Scorners Have a Certain Power

 

I finally broke through and realized that I am a consummate scorner.  I have cultivated this for many years, and especially the last five.  I will tell now, I am to scorning as Tiger Woods is to golf.  I have been diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a durmoid brain tumor, lung issues with a chemical accident, manic-depression requiring extensive hospitalization, and a low thyroid requiring meds.  And, on top of this, the death of a newborn daughter.

My faith has been extremely challenged through all of this.  I have pastored a church and taught classes at a local Bible college, all with a lot of enthusiasm and purpose.  My students and my congregation were being blessed.  But all of this pretty much disintegrated around me and I found myself with a whole lot of nothing. 

Scorn has never been anything I gravitated to.  But it has ‘seeped’ into my thinking, through a slow and steady presence.  It works like mercury poisoning.  It has touched me as a gradual toxin, slowly sickening me with its constant contact.  I haven’t been connected with the light as I should have.  But over an extensive amount of time, a venomous and noxious filth has been introduced into my heart and my thinking.  It must be like watching someone die from ‘radiation sickness’.

To scorn means to become ” ‘competous’, disdainful, scornful, to mock.”  I never, ever dreamed I would be brought to this point.  But life has continuously rolled over me, and I find I just can’t make it work anymore.  I definitely do understand the promises of God.  But I definitely do not understand God’s grace on me.  But you might as well try to explain the color ‘blue’ to a blind man.

I am Bryan, the scorner.  I am also ‘a spiritual beggar’, with a significant mental illness.  I should be on the streets pushing a shopping cart and drinking cheap vodka.  When I start to scorn, I get mean and cynical.  I’m contemptuous and I sneer at whatever crosses my path that day.  I hear voices and ‘tune in’ radio stations.  All I lack is a ‘tin-foil’ hat, which I have seriously considered.

My depression molds my thinking, and my despair rules the rest.  The promises of God are not for me, and they seem to always be out of my reach.  In many ways, I am an ‘unbelieving’ believer (there are many people like us).  My own frosty coldness and hardness never seems to amaze me.  I don’t want to be this way.  God, help me please.

A defining word, for people like me is this: “self-forgiveness“.  I consider myself above average when it comes to forgiving others.  I look forward to forgiving others.  But, I just cannot forgive myself.  I simply can’t let myself  ‘get off the hook’.  At times I do sense a comfort and a peace over these sins, but very soon they begin to rub me raw.  Like blisters, or ‘a stone in my shoe’, I begin to limp again. They are incredibly persistant.

This is not self-pity.  I am not looking for any manner of attention or warm hugs.  I do though want to open up my darkness so the light gets in.  I must learn to forgive myself, if I will ever walk clean.  This is imperative.  The adulteress who fell at Jesus’ feet and wept managed to forgive herself of a great deal of sin.  Those of us with mental illness/addictions have to come to this same point.  Is Jesus’ love enough to cover me?