Tag: Forgiveness

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Don’t burn the bridge, repair it!

Reading Time: 2 minutes 
“Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends.” Proverbs‬ ‭17:9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

We’ve lost trust and forgotten how to forgive.

Friendships are fragile in the beginning. They take time to build. And they take effort to get past the surface, shallow conversations. Great friendships spend very little time talking about the weather or the scoreboard stats of their favorite team, they are able to dive in deep and discuss things that matter. In great friendships there is a comfort of confession, shared secrets and honesty of our own failures. After some time, there is this thing called trust.

Trust means, they know enough to destroy you if they wanted to – ah but they don’t. And not just because you have an equal amount of dirt on them! Friendships that go through the conflicts, headaches and tunnels of chaos are the ones that endure to see the beauty of walking through life with people who would do anything for you and you for them.

The wisdom writers nail this truth about friendship. It REQUIRES forgiveness. There is absolutely no way that one or more of your friends won’t let you down, disappoint or even betray you! It is naive to think otherwise.

I love this truth LOVE PROSPERS when you forgive. Yeah, maybe it takes a little time to hop back into the trust saddle, but eventually that’s the goal – rebuild trust and make that bridge even stronger. Folks have been burning so many friendship bridges that they find themselves abandoned and isolated on their own bitter island! Look around. If all you see is burned out bridges with your new hermit lifestyle, you’re not living in heaven on earth, you’re living in hell. I’ve heard so many stories of how easy it is to declare the mafia mantra, “you are dead to me,” to deep, longtime friendships and even more so with family.

Proverbs and wisdom declares those decisions as FOOLISH. To continue to do so means you are just playing the fool. Man up, woman up – forgive! Even as Christ has forgiven you.

One other thing, obsessing over the fault, the betrayal, the misunderstood gestures is a sure way to not just separate you from a formerly good friend. It’s the fastest and most effective way to open your life, heart and soul to the deceiver who will come and fill that festering wound with poisoned pus. Your choice, your move.

Prayer

Dad,
I am so glad I don’t carry grudges or faults too long. I have so many amazing friendships that truly have saved and surrounded my life with your grace. Maybe it is just my personality fluke that helps me not harbour, dwell or obsess over wrongs done to me. Sometimes I like to think, “this person doesn’t even know me well enough TO hurt me.” Why should I carry that offense? I don’t even know them well enough to dislike them back 😇. I want to live my life giving second to seventh chances. Not only being quick to forgive, but redirecting those painful triggers to invest in people even more. Sure, it’s risky. But I know what a risk and wreck I was when you offered me that rescue rope of hope.

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¡Bienvenido a la revolución!

Reading Time: 2 minutes 
“But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you.” Luke‬ ‭6:27-28‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Society has rules that we live by. It’s not just our geographic context or culture, it’s our overarching and unifying way of life. You do me wrong, I retaliate. You make a joke about one of my family members and I slap your face! It’s a code. It’s genetic. All this talk about love, kindness and non-violence – ah that’s so vogue.

Bullies are out, those are “red choices” my granddaughter’s preschool teachers would say. Forgiveness and using your words (and someone to understand the bully) is the hot-topic morality today.

You know who started the revolution? Yeah, Jesus. He’s the same guy that folks want left out of government, education and civil conversation because it’s deemed divisively religious. And everyone knows religion is judgey. Funny that Jesus was the epitome of revolutionary and rather anti-religion.

He actually said, you’ve heard… “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” but I say… Almost every day on the news we hear about an escalated incident that goes way beyond black eyes and missing teeth! It’s Annie get your gun and blam blam blam, someone is dead. It’s so massively ironic that the guy who made “don’t judge” a thing which is now considered to be the lightening rod of any non-civil conversation. Jesus is the one who said “DON’T.” So sure folks can hide behind “choices” or “I identify as” or even have the law give them a special and protected class meant to protect people from bullies. Jesus said things that were anti-human nature – forgive, give, love, BLESS (which isn’t the word, makarios: to make happy but rather eulogeó: to speak well of, praise)! What if the “protected class by law” becomes our cultural bullies? What if folks quit being advocates and look more like activists who behave violently? I think we should quit giving credit to our more modern, historical peacemakers and remember where they got their campaign slogans from – Jesus, the founder and president of the LOVE movement.

PRAYER:

Dad,
I just get so worked up over the enemy of our soul, Satan, supplanting and subtly stealing YOUR words and twisting them to be used against you – and for sure, against us. Satan is a thief, even stealing words and symbols like love, promise and rainbows to be bumper-stickered to promote lies and deeply, morally bankrupt codes of conduct. These bait and switch techniques are so damnable! By the time folks find truth or realize they’ve been duped there has been so much damaged done to their souls, their relationships not to mention the platforms they used to mislead thousands of others. It’s just awful, it makes me sick to see it happen. And even still, I know that you will be waiting like a good father who runs to the prodigal because they’ve come home! I just ask that you stop them from spreading the pig-slop as truth! It’s not a lifestyle, it’s a blatant liestyle.

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Healing a soul is far more difficult

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“One day while Jesus was teaching, some Pharisees and teachers of religious law were sitting nearby. (It seemed that these men showed up from every village in all Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem.) And the Lord’s healing power was strongly with Jesus. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat. They tried to take him inside to Jesus,” Luke‬ ‭5:17-18‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Any day the experts and critics show up for you to speak is a good day to really focus on your mission. Luke tells us that all these people just “show up” and hangout nearby. THEY’RE thinking, “keep your enemies closer.” Thankfully God’s power was there for healing. And funny enough, the word Luke uses for healing, iaomai, is generally used for physical healing, but it is also used for spiritual healing. Interesting, right?

All the planning by these men was to get a friend to Jesus because he was paralyzed. All the clamor to climb up and crash through the roof was these friends wanting this man to experience a full life on two legs that worked. All that work, all that commotion for what?

Luke says that Jesus took one look at the paralyzed man as well as the generous amount of faith from the man’s friends. But then, Jesus must have caught the look in the religious’ folks eyes. And in that moment Jesus decided to direct God’s power into healing this man’s soul – he forgave him of his sins!

I am positive that Jesus had to hold back his joyous reaction to the shocked look on EVERYONE’S face!

The man who was healed must have heaved in relief from whatever he had been secretly carrying. The friends must have experienced a flood of feelings. Maybe they knew the man’s past. For sure they didn’t see anything like that coming. And oh, the looks on the faces of the Pharisees – PRICELESS.

The experts quickly ask the perfect question, “who does he think he is?” Then they answer their own question without realizing it. “Only God can forgive sin.” Yep, Jesus doesn’t think he’s God, he knows he’s God.

What a Jesus thing to do! He wanted to deal with the man’s soul first (which is much harder than healing a couple of legs). It is so EASY for God to physically heal a body, because he created our bodies from dirt! But getting us to cough up our sin, to turn from our selfish, arrogant independence and run to truth and into the Father’s arms – that is incredibly difficult.

Jesus woo’d a soul out of darkness and gave him a glimpse of the freedom as his sin was lifted, taken from him. Young man you are forgiven.

The religious grumbled at the invisible, but palpable power of authority Jesus commanded in that room. Jesus spoke their thoughts out loud. Then in the next moment answered everyone’s prayer. Stand up, you are healed. The paralyzed man was happy, his friends happy, the crowd watching were pumped. And the religious, well they also were happy because they got the proof they needed to put Jesus to death – Jesus claimed to be God.

PRAYER:

Dad,
Wow. What a day that was. What a moment of beauty. What an amazing story of clarity of mission. Jesus came to save the sinner, to heal the sick and broken, to show us who you are and your great love and mercy towards us. What will life be like without sin? What will this renewed, recreated Earth be like without the curse upon it? What will heaven be like with no adversary, no lies, no deceit? I can only imagine.