Tag: Jesus

Sorry, Not Sorry

Have you ever heard someone say those words? “Sorry, not sorry.” It’s kind of annoying. It’s said following a statement or action the speaker knows is unkind or won’t be appreciated by someone else, but they just don’t care. It’s worse than not saying sorry at all.

We humans have a terrible time admitting when we are in the wrong. There’s always some justification for our actions, often that we were wronged first, or we had no choice, or some such nonsense. Misunderstandings escalate into disagreements, which quickly become heated arguments, and nobody really wins in the end. Sometimes good friends end up enemies, all because no one will say those two simple, yet truly difficult, words: “I’m sorry.”

We sometimes have the same problem with God. We know we have not acted as we should, but we can’t let go of pride and say we are sorry. Scripture reveals the truth: a contrite heart is all God wants from us. He desires for us to admit when we’ve missed the mark.

The stories of King David and King Saul illustrate this principle. Both were in the wrong. David committed adultery, and then had the husband of the woman he slept with sent to the front lines of a battle, knowing he would be killed. But when the prophet Nathan brought David’s transgressions to his attention, David’s response was a remorseful attitude. He immediately fell to his knees and confessed his sin. And God forgave David.

Saul, on the other hand, committed a transgression that seems much less serious. He counted his army. Doesn’t sound like much of a sin, does it? But the heart of Saul’s transgression was a lack of trust in God. He didn’t believe he would win a battle even though God had promised him victory. Not only did Saul not trust God, he refused to confess his lack of trust. Instead he made excuses, tried to justify his actions. As a result, God took away Saul’s kingdom and gave it to David. And God did not forgive Saul.

David is remembered as a man after God’s own heart in spite of his many sins because a relationship with God was most important to him. Saul is not remembered so kindly.

What have we lost because we refuse to say we are sorry? A kind word, an admission of our own contribution to a dispute, can go a long way toward healing relationships. Is there someone you need to say “I’m sorry” to today? What’s holding you back? Is it a stubborn nature, like what often holds me back? What do you have to lose? What do I have to lose? More importantly, think what we have to gain.

What about your relationship with God? Is there some transgression you need to confess to restore the intimacy you once enjoyed with your Savior? What do you have to lose? You have the best God intends for you to gain.

The Hiding Place

forgiveness

“Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

Ephesians 4:32, NLT

Great hearts are often brought through experiences that demand intense forgiving.

The Father tutors us through out our earthly lives, with many visits to this classroom. It’s here we get our learning. It will happen several times in our walk, and we carry different nuances, or slants. Each time we are required to forgive authentically. The course is set for us. We can’t choose to skip these lessons without injuring ourselves, and harming others.

We are learning to love– it is our calling and destiny. There are no “accidents” or misaligned ‘drop-outs’ here. We step into our classroom, and the Teacher and Comforter begins His instruction. Many things will strike you as diabolical. Deep inside us we have simply no idea of how “this” will turn out for good. And you’d be right. But the power of God steps in, and “all is well”.

Corrie ten Boom-- Writer, speaker, Christian
Corrie ten Boom– Writer, speaker, Christian

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian.

After her release from a Nazi concentration camp, she began traveling the world and speaking to any who would have her. The needs of postwar Europe were desperate. She traveled as an evangelist telling people who Jesus is and spoke about His redemption. She gave many people hope.

Through her travels she came in contact with a few of the guards that had been a part of the Nazi regime and had to practice forgiveness that only Jesus can bring. The first encounter with one of her previous jailers proved to be most difficult.

Here is an excerpt from her book, “The Hiding Place”.

“It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

She then took his hand and the most incredible thing happened.

From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

Corrie’s Wisdom for Us

  1. There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.
  2. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
  3. It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.
  4. When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.
  5. Faith is like radar that sees through the fog-the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.
  6. Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.

For her efforts to hide Jews from arrest and deportation during the German occupation of the Netherlands, Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) received recognition from the Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” on December 12, 1967.

#

aabryscript

A Member of Faithful Bloggers

C.S. Lewis on Forgiveness

I love the Psalms and C.S. Lewis’s reflections are inspiring. This quote in particular makes you think. Jesus really did say forgive “seventy times seven,” which literally means as many times as necessary. Ouch! That’s a hard truth to swallow along with our pride.

There is no use talking as if forgiveness were easy. We all know the old joke, ‘You’ve given up smoking once; I’ve given it up a dozen times.’ In the same way I could say of a certain man, ‘Have I forgiven him for what he did that day? I’ve forgiven him more times than I can count.’ For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again. We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence.

-from Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis

Seventy times seven to the tenth power seems to be how many times I must learn the lesson of forgiveness. I know how healing and freeing it is to forgive . . . until I forget.

1 Corinthians 13:5 says love “keeps no record of wrongs.” But when someone has wronged me I don’t much feel like loving them anyway.

Thankfully Jesus never said to His Father, “Don’t forgive them. I don’t much feel like loving them anyway.”

Last Year’s Transgression

Earlier this year I was holding onto an offence from summer 2020. I reached the hard decision to forgive. Really, I had. But every time I was reminded of it, I record anew how I was wronged.

“And she’s not even sorry,” I explained to God. She doesn’t even think she did anything wrong. Early on, He woke me in the middle of the night: “Pray for her.”

“You mean like David prayed for You to destroy his enemies in the Psalms?”

“No, not like that. Pray as Jesus prayed for you.”

So I did. And it helped to heal the wound and free my mind from the trap of bitterness.

I learned my lesson and each time the anger creeped in again, I forgave a little more quickly.

The Never-Ending Transgression

Until recently when someone who has said things that hurt me on way more than seventy-times-seven occasions. It’s been the story of my life, to have her speak words that shatter my heart.

I know I need to forgive her. And many times I have. But this latest wound was just too much. I was already grieving and she compounded my grief tenfold with her words.

She’ll blame it on her mental illness, and I get that it’s a struggle for her. She’ll blame it on her own grief, but that doesn’t give her the right to ignore my grief.

She’ll claim she doesn’t even remember saying what she said. And maybe she doesn’t. But I do. I remember every cruel word she has ever spoken to me. Every single one. Maybe that’s my problem. I’ve often forgiven but not forgotten.

I ruminated on what I might say to her when next we met and I couldn’t come up with anything nice. I’ve spent decades being loving and understanding and forgiving. This time I didn’t think I could.

But I did. It took the power of the Holy Spirit to draw from my mouth the right things to say, the forgiving thing to say. It helped that the focus was on the one we were both grieving over.

A Prayer for You and Me

Heavenly Father, Help me to forgive as You do, more quickly and completely, as You forgive me. Help the one reading this post, who may also be struggling to forgive a long list of transgressions, to turn to You for help. In Jesus’s Name, Amen.

When the Storms Rage On

 

“Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.”

Deut. 31:8, NLT

You can go to the British Museum in London, England and view for yourself old nautical charts that were made in the early 1500s. Written on them are things like, “Here be fiery scorpions” and “Here be giants” or the classic, “Here be dragons.” These notations were written I suppose, to discourage any future kind of exploration.

At this early point a man named Sir John Franklin wrote on each map, “Here is God.” His sincerity was well noted– and it strengthened the sailors, and helped them to trust in a discovery that would lead to salvation for many.

“As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” 36 So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). 37 But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water.”

Mark 4:35-37

There lots of waves, plenty enough to go around. The disciples, most of them who are grizzled fisherman, are just starting to realize that their boat isn’t equipped with any life-jackets. They are in deep trouble, and I suppose many “crossed” themselves and prepared to die. Everything now is lost.

When death comes to visit it can be quite sobering. It clarifies so much. If you’ve ever been at this point, you will understand what I am saying.

“But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” 39 Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.”

Mark 4:38-39

Where is Jesus? Look! There he is–sleeping on a pillow. “How can He sleep, when the world is going to end?” They wake up him up, and pointedly say, “Don’t you even care? We are at the very point of death!”

Shaking off His slumber, Jesus stands. He looks at the vicious waves, and then announces, “Be at peace, be still.” Immediately the storm automatically ‘shuts down.’ There is no reluctance, no hesitation. The waves become calm and subdued, instantly. The Greek word he uses is “to be muzzled,” which is exactly the word he uses when he binds the demon several verses later.

Jesus turns, He focuses on His own disciples. “Why did you doubt?”  He asks. And they can say nothing. “Where is your faith?” he asks. And again, they can say nothing. They’re overwhelmed at the authority of Jesus. They’re more amazed at him, then they ever were at the storm. 

Confusion often rules over us, when desperation is present. But yet, this is not totally true, confusion will enter in, when everything we see is impossible. We glance back at Jesus, and we see and discover His power and significance. Rightly so, when our storm overwhelms us, it’s his chance to prove himself, and to show us who we really are–or rather, who we aren’t.

The disciples should have by now, realized the full strength of Jesus. Our Lord was so very tired. And yet before he went to sleep, he told his followers that he would bring them to the opposite side of the lake. Being drowned in the middle of the lake was never a factor, nor was it in his plans.

Our lives should be focused on Jesus leading us through to the other side. He is in our tiny little boat, and yet we struggle with such humongous waves. They threaten to cripple and completely dismantle us, and besides, so much water is getting into our boat. And unless he gets directly involved, we’re going to sink like a rock!

We won’t always travel through calm waters.

There will be definite times when we discover peace and confidence, and things will be fairly easy. Dangers that will visit us, and yet are not really a problem. But rain or shine, we are His children. We don’t know why, but he really does love us. We are his “property” and we must believe that we belong to him, and he’s fully dedicated to bring us all the way home.

Never, ever doubt His deep love for your soul.

bry-signat (1)

We’re a Member of Faithful Bloggers