As we gear up for Monday’s study, I will make you two promises.
Here’s the first. . .
I won’t have all the answers
If you have struggled in the past with formulaec answers (if you just do A + B, it will always = C). . .
If forgiveness has been tied up in a nice tidy Nike command that says, “Just Do It!”, and you’ve tried and it hasn’t worked. . .
Then you are the right place, because forgiving is messy and hard and freeing.
This past weekend I spent a day with my brother and his family. We stood in the hall and chatted and he said, “”What do you tell them? What do you say about forgiving?”
I took a deep breath. You see, my younger brother knows me. He doesn’t see me as Suzie the author, or Suzie the speaker.
He just sees me as Suz.
We have a shared history.
I answered. “I tell them that I’m not an expert. I’m just someone who has taken this journey, and I found that forgiving is the most challenging, most freeing decision I’ve ever made. . . but that’s it’s messy, and hard, and a lifetime journey.”
He smiled. “Good.”
And then he shared some of his most private moments in his own journey.
I hope one day he shares those stories with the world, because they are powerful, but they are not mine to tell.
But his stories were a reminder to me all over again that we need God in this process. . . and it is often in the hardest, most painful moments of wrestling with this thing called forgiveness that God shows up.
One of the most impactful words my brother shared that day was, “. . . and then Suzie, I got up and started losing.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled through tears. “I started losing to my own human nature. I didn’t get to give in to those things or those feelings though I desperately wanted to. I didn’t get to pull out what happened to us in the past and use that with my loved ones. The more I lost, and even the harder that it was, the more that my loved ones gained, and the more that I saw Jesus in the hardest parts of losing.”
That’s not a formula. That’s far from a “Just Do It” mentality.
It’s God showing up in the harder moments of our faith.
I’ve thought about my brother’s words all weekend long.
Thank you, sweet brother. What a powerful way to put it. When we forgive we begin to lose.
So, no promise of quick fixes, but a hope of losing so that we might gain.
My first promise is that I won’t have all the answers.
And my second? I’ll make that to you on Monday as we begin our journey together.
Forgiveness – or the thoughts about it – keep slinking around in my brain. I think about it; try to put it under my thumb; talk with God about it, and still I keep finding that I’m not quite where I want to be (Nor where God wants me to be) in regards to this slippery subject. It’s so easy to pontificate about it and in doing that we manage to side step it. Jesus talked about it a lot. He knows our propensity to avoiding things that are uncomfortable. I hope that someday soon I can get beyond the log jamb called ‘forgiveness’……
WELL I CAN ONLY SPEAK FROM MY EXPERIENCE AND FOR ME I COULD NOT MOVE FORWARD IN MY WALK WITH GOD UNTIL I TRULY RECOGNIZED THAT ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS WAS ONE OF THE STEPS OF SETTING ME FREE FROM THE BONDAGE OF PRIDE, ANGER, WHICH FIRST STARTED OUT AS HURT FEELINGS THEN ANGER. I DIDN’T WANT TO TURN INTO A BITTER PERSON SO I STRUGGLED AND PRAYED ON IT AND GOD ALWAYS HAS COME THROUGH TO HELP ME SAY THE WORDS THAT NEEDED TO BE SAID. SO THE KEY IS TO JUST GO TO FATHER GOD AND BE HONEST AND TELL HIM THAT YOU WANT TO BE OBEDIENT TO HIM BUT NEED HIS HELP TO DO WHAT HE WANTS YOU TO DO. HE WILL CHANGE YOUR HEART AND HE WILL LET YOU KNOW WHAT TO SAY AND HOW TO SAY IT. NOW I UNDERSTAND HIS WORD “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” YOU WILL BE SET FREE AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CONTINUE YOUR WALK WITH THE LORD. I HAVE HAD TO DO THIS 2 TIMES ALREADY BUT I KNOW THAT GOD IS HELPING ME AND TEACHING ME. I HAD TO BE WILLING TO WANT TO OBEY GOD. OBEDIENCE IS THE KEY. LEARNING TO LOVE PEOPLE THROUGH GODS EYES IS THE KEY ALSO. I COULD GO ON BUT I HOPE THIS HELPS OUT.
I hope I signed up on the correct link…
I love the Isa 43:18-19 verses I found in the book during my weekend study. In fact the whole chapter is about victory…PTL! I have read them over and over this weekend – what precious promises they are to those of us working through this forgiveness thing. We are truly walking (Isa 43: 2) “through the waters…; the fire…; the flames…but God is with us!!! I’m so excited about this path on the road to freedom from these horrible emotions of unforgiveness and pain. Isn’t God an amazing Father? (That’s a rhetorical question…of course He is!)
Just read the intro and first chapter. I really need this and a lot of what you wrote really hit me. In answering the questions at the back of the first chapter I realized that my “unforgiveness” started at a young age. My mother married a man her family didn’t approve of so I was never good enough for her family and they had no qualms of letting me know. I moved to a new school in the midst of 4th grade and was never accepted. Kids I thought were my friends ended up bullying me although “bullying” per se didn’t exist in those days. So most likely by the time I hit 20 I had built up walls around me so high so no one could hurt me but along with those walls came distrust and bitterness. Also, along with the walls and “tough act” came the interpretation from others that I could handle anything because I never let my feelings show. I really hit the wall a few months ago when I sat in a waiting room at a hospital where my husband was having serious heart issues and we didn’t know if he’d make it or not. I looked around me and saw families and friends and there I sat alone. I went home that evening and there were no messages on the answering machine, no e-mails. My walls of defense had truly left me an island on my own. So I need to ask God to help me forgive the hurts of the past and to learn to trust again, to tear down the walls and open up my heart so I can have friends and family again.
Wow. Just came across this quote today out of the blue. “Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness but because you deserve peace,”