Category: forgiveness

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Repost: Regrets and Fears

This was originally posted on September 23, 2008.

I recently heard someone praying and this person stated that, “We come to you with hearts full of regret for the past, and with hearts full of fear of the future.” This caused me to think of our relationship to God and what should be the fruit of that relationship.

If we belong to the Father, we are his children. We are recipients of his love and grace. While our past is full of sin and mistakes, Jesus has redeemed our past on the cross. He has freed us from our sin and the guilt that comes from it. There are still times that I look and wish that I hadn’t done certain things or had done other things differently. The difference between that and a “heart full of regret” is that I realize that there is nothing I can do about most, if not all, of those things; but that Jesus has done something about them. He has forgiven me and has even used some of those things to draw me to himself. So, like the Apostle Paul, I can forget the things behind me, and continue on toward being formed into the image of Christ.

I’ll admit that I still struggle with worrying about the future. The Father is teaching me how to rest in his arms and trust him to do what is right and what is best. In Romans 8:15, Paul writes that God has given us a spirit, not of slavery to fear, but of sonship. By this spirit, we call God “Abba”. We can trust our Abba completely, as a little child trusts his daddy no matter what. 1 John 4:18 tells us that their is no fear in love, that perfect love drives out fear.

Child of Abba, take heart. There is nothing in your past that has not been redeemed by Jesus. The Father uses everything to make us more like Christ, even the times we’ve screwed up. There is nothing in your future that you need to fear. God is already there, and there is absolutely nothing that can separate you from his love. Learn to rest in that love and let it cast out fear.

Don’t let any person, trial, or circumstance try to convince you that God does not love you with an everlasting love. Don’t let anyone tell you that you must do X, Y, or Z in order for God to be pleased with you. He already is.

May you be overwhelmed with Abba’s love.

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The Prodigal Son: The Younger Son

Today, I’m starting a three part series on the story of the Prodigal Son. The story of the prodigal is a story of God’s grace to his wayward children when they come home. It is also a story with a number of layers that speak to us in different ways at different times in our lives. Henri Nouwen wrote a book titled, The Return of the Prodigal Son, based on his reflections on a painting by Rembrandt. My ramblings come largely from reading this book.

The first person we encounter in the story is the younger son. This son comes to his father and asks for his part of the inheritance that would come to him after his father dies. This is more than just a request to get money due him earlier than he would normally receive it. The ones who heard this story would have been outraged at the attitude of the younger son. In effect, he was saying to his father, “I reject you and everything you stand for, your culture, your religion, everything. I wish you were dead!” In a culture where rebellious children could be stoned to death, this was a dangerous and devastating statement for the son to make and for the father to hear. The father however, decided to give his son what he asked for. He handed over the money and said goodbye. As a father, I can imagine the heartbreak he went through as one of his sons turned his back on everything and left.

The younger son went off to a “distant country,” where he squandered his inheritance on parties and whores. He was completely deaf to the voice that would have reminded him of his father’s love and of what he had been taught. In short, he forgot who he was. I would imagine that most of us can see ourselves in the younger son in some way. Some may have wandered into a life of dissipation and come out of it. Others may have experimented with some things but not gone all the way in. In my own life, I was drawn in to things that were not good for me, although I never wandered completely away. Of course, there are some out there who would consider me a prodigal today.

There is another way to be the younger son, a way that many, many more have fallen into. That is the way of forgetting whose child we are and trying to get our identity from other things or other people. That is the way I most identify with the prodigal. Whether it’s from a job, a skill, a style, or a group of people, we try to prove our worth by other things than what our Father says. Our culture says that what is important is how you dress, what job you have, what kind of car you drive, how much money you make, or what group you hang out with. Unfortunately, those things become like the husks the prodigal wished to eat while feeding the pigs. Trying to find our worth and identity in any thing of this world is a futile exercise, leading to emptiness.

Fortunately for the prodigal, he did come to his senses and remember who he was. I can see him slapping himself on the forehead, and saying, “What am I doing here? I’m not a pig farmer! I’m a son of a father who has a lot of money and food! Why am I starving here?” So, after coming to his senses he returned home. He still didn’t completely remember who we was though. Or better, he didn’t understand completely the kind of person his father was. His plan was to go home and convince his father to give him a job. He didn’t believe his father would accept him back as a son. We sometimes also forget who we are dealing with when we go to our Father. We believe the lies that we can’t be his child if we do certain things, or that we have to do something to get ourselves back into his good graces. We feel we have to “get right with God.” We forget that our Father loves us and always accepts us.

The son returns and finds himself in the midst of a homecoming better than he could have imagined. He can’t get his prepared speech out before his father welcomes him back and throws the biggest party the neighborhood has ever seen. So it is when we come to our senses and remember who we are. We are beloved children of the Creator of the universe. He is pleased with us, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to cause his love to decrease, and nothing we can do to increase his love. He holds us in his hands and nothing can pull us out. Period.

Remember who you are. If you’ve forgotten, your Father is looking for your return so he can lavish his grace and love on you.

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Sermon on the Mount

In our Sunday gatherings in our house, we’ve been looking at the life of Jesus. We’ve been going through the Gospels in chronological order. About 4 weeks ago, we came to Matthew 5, where Jesus teaches about the kingdom of God.

Growing up, I was taught that the teachings about the kingdom of God were essentially for the Jews of Jesus’ day, and that when they rejected Jesus that kingdom was essentially postponed until the Millennium. They were not really for the church, other than as an example for us to follow. We were taught that if we became poor in spirit because of our sin, we would then mourn over that sin, and so on. All of these things would lead to us being “right with God.” The other teachings were pretty much new laws for us to try and follow. Still, not a lot was said about the kingdom.

In recent years, as I’ve studied Jesus and his kingdom, I’ve come to different conclusions about these teachings in Matthew, and in other passages. I believe that Jesus is teaching about the kinds of people who are welcome in his kingdom, and through whom the kingdom will come. The poor, the left out, the outcasts, are the ones who are in the kingdom, as opposed to the elite, the self-sufficient, those who have it all together. These are the ones through whom the Spirit moves, and the way these folks carry out there day-to-day is completely different from the way those in the kingdoms of this world operate. Instead of pride, there is humility. Instead of “justice,” there is mercy. Instead of revenge, there is forgiveness.

We also saw that so much of the way God’s kingdom works on this earth has to do with relationships. We are told that seeking forgiveness and reconciliation is more important than worship. We are told that treating others in a loving, forgiving manner is more important than following some rules that allow us to avoid love. We are taught that a righteousness that comes from inside is better than one that is simply external.

Jesus took the “traditional” definition of God’s kingdom and turned it upside down. He said that the kingdom was here, but not in the way it was expected. The religious leaders (the righteous) missed it. It was the “sinners” who got it. It was not the best and brightest who followed the King. It was the folks who had been told they were not good enough. The early church was full of these. Somehow, we’ve taken Jesus’ teachings and basically forgotten them. We follow the preachers who are the most articulate speakers, the ones who can command an audience of thousands. We use others for our own purposes, rather than love them. We want God to give us everything we want, instead of being willing to suffer for Jesus’ sake.

If Jesus is the King, if we are part of his kingdom, our lives will be such that the world will think us strange. Our values, the way we treat others, will seem upside down. Our righteousness will go far beyond a righteousness that is determined by law. It will be a righteousness that comes from inside, from the Spirit that is in us. We will indeed be agents of a kingdom that is not from this world, and a King who has already conquered the powers. As we look for the ultimate setting right of all things, we will see, and provide, glimpses of that final, full fruition of the kingdom of God.

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Grace and Self-Righteousness

One of the things God is teaching me is that any righteousness I might have comes from him alone. If I think that I am better than anyone else, then I am greatly mistaken.

Frank Viola has a post titled A Farewell to Self Righteousness, that is a reminder that no one’s sins are really worse than mine and that we are all in desperate need of God’s grace.

Here are a couple of quotes from the post, but you really need to read the whole thing for yourself:

Now let’s put a modern Christian in that room with Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Pharisees. A self-righteous Christian, mind you.

“Um [cough] … Lord Jesus, did she ask You to forgive her? I didn’t hear her say she was sorry for living as a prostitute. How do we know if she has really repented, Lord? Do You mind if I interrogate her for a bit, please?”

Such is the spirit of a Pharisee. And we have not so learned Jesus Christ.

If Mary of Magdala could love her Lord and enjoy His presence boldly, flagrantly, extravagantly, shamelessly, and without inhibition, then so can you. And so can I.

Therefore, the next time you feel condemnation over your past, please remember this one thing: The first person to lay eyes upon the resurrected Lord was a former prostitute.

It’s easy for us to look at what other people do and judge them, especially if we feel they have wronged us. Many times we are kept from extravagantly loving Jesus because we look at others rather than allowing the Spirit to show us where we have sinned, and just how much grace the Father has given us.

God help us to extend to others the same grace that God has shown us.