Forgiveness and Love

I thought I’d clarify for you a comment I made on the last night of the retreat. It seemed there were many gals who didn’t want to come because they don’t feel they relate to women well. I totally respect and understand that, and definitely could have been said to feel that way myself in years past. However, my reasons were quite different. Let me explain.

I had prepared for months to do the Worship music for the retreat with joy and gladness in my heart. I was excited and challenged. I’d never led in such a capacity before. I’d led out on songs, and I’d even helped Tom make up sets before, but I’d never had the burden of responsibility so squarely put on my shoulders. However, I was confident God would be strong in my weakness and inability. I prayed for each of you who attended, that God would work in your hearts through the message and the music, and that particularly, the offerings of music would draw you to God and truly lead you in to worship. I prayed that I wouldn’t get in the way, and that the “team” would pull together in harmony.

I forgot to pray for myself, and I came under serious spiritual attack. A few days before the retreat, I began to doubt my ability to successfully navigate a whole weekend’s worth of worship sets. I began to feel we as a team had too little preparation. Thursday, I began to doubt you gals would be able to sing along, and that it would become a hobbled, rag tag performance of sorts as we limped our way through the songs. And though God calmed my fears and assuaged my doubts, I began to let bitterness grow toward others, and it started so small, I didn’t notice it.

Over two years ago, the Holy Spirit turned my life around by teaching me to forgive. I learned that my bitterness was most damaging to me, rather than those whom I harbored it towards. But what’s more, I learned that I was in disobedience to God, throwing his love—his forgiveness—back in his face. I learned that I was exacting punishment for small sins against me, while begging God to forgive my very nature. So humbling and so freeing was this revelation about forgiveness, that my marriage was restored. My life was so vastly improved by a heart willing to forgive that I couldn’t help but share the news and the value of forgiveness with others. If you want to read a few of the verses that were instrumental in learning about forgiveness, see Eph 4:26-27, 31-32, and especially Matthew 18:21-35

Ever since then, I have occasional bouts of believing I have this forgiveness “thing” figured out, and God has shown me otherwise. As soon as pride creeps in and I feel I’ve arrived and am complete, as far as forgiving others, I am challenged and I fail, and rediscover that it is only through Christ that I can forgive at all—I forgive because I have been forgiven, and that not of my own ability, but through Christ in me.

The retreat found me in such a place of pride, on the brink of a challenge, on the brink of failure, and quite simply, I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want the pain of growth, I didn’t want to change.

I guess for once, pride served me well, because there was no way I could let Bridget and Crystal, Tammi, and Sarah down. I couldn’t face them if I gave up and bagged out. And so, I went on the retreat.

Praise God that he is faithful to himself. Nothing got in the way of his name being praised and glorified. It was an awesome weekend of worship, and you gals sang your hearts out! It was truly such a blessing and a joy to be a part of.

However, I didn’t experience the full joy and blessing of the weekend until over a week had passed. My fear of being challenged and of failure had been fully realized, and though I’d succeeded in forgiveness on some fronts, I had let a vital aspect of forgiveness slip through my fingers.

Forgiveness is not simply about turning the other cheek and forgoing retribution. It’s not about putting the past behind you. As a Christian, forgiveness is about emulating Christ, and he is LOVE. Forgiveness in Christ is about love.

And though I felt I had gone quite far enough in forgiving, and by the world’s standards, I’d gone much farther than necessary, I fell far short of Christ. How deep is Christ’s love? Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” On the cross, he begged forgiveness for his killers (Luke 23:34a), and John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” —mothers, you know how great a love it must be that a father could sacrifice his own child!

Ah, my heart. Even writing this, I am struck with how lowly I am. How foolishly I raised myself up, crowing in pride over my righteousness. How I mocked God in claiming to love and forgive those who sin against me. God’s love is so much more than I offer in my measly forgiveness. He not only gave up his Son for us, but then adopted us as his own! (Ephesians 1:5) How far did I want to go? I wanted to “forgive” and then detach. It would be easy to avoid a recurring need to forgive if I simply avoided anyone who could require my forgiveness.

The book Chris is currently taking us through, Ecclesiastes, is not my favorite, but like the retreat, it serves to reveal my sin and causes growing pains, and the growth itself is good. Chapter 7 was so perfectly timed and full of pointed truths:

Ecc 7:9 “Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, For anger resides in the bosom of fools.”

I’m not sure eager is the best description of what was going on in my heart, but I was inclined to become angry, which is essentially the same thing.

Ecc 7:16 “Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?”

Chris explained that being excessively righteous is self righteousness. That’s exactly what I was.

Ecc 7:20 “Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who {continually} does good and who never sins.”

A very true statement, and a very good reason not to be self righteous.

Ecc 7:21 - 22 “Also, do not take seriously all words which are spoken, so that you will not hear your servant cursing you.
For you also have realized that you likewise have many times cursed others.”

What good advice! Why should I take so seriously words that are not given much consideration by the one who speaks them? And another good reminder that I am not above sin.

Ecclesiastes 7 was God piercing my heart with truth.

But in my pride and blindness, I refused to fully comprehend the purpose of these verses in my life for that moment. So God pressed me further with fruitful fellowship. The final stroke, when my eyes were truly opened, came from a conversation with Beth Stitt, in which I spoke of my mom, who looks for the good in others rather than the bad. I’ve strived to cultivate the same perspective. My mom is inclined to love others rather than critically regard them, finding weakness and flaws. She sees people as unfinished projects, and shows love even in the face of unkindness toward herself.

As I related this, I realized that Christ’s love is so much greater even than this. My mom’s love requires that she be able to recognize some character trait as good. Christ loves us in spite of clearly seeing all our bad points, and seeing, too, that our good points are rather more like our least-worst points, hardly good at all. I want to look on others with Christ’s eyes, and have Christ’s love.

What’s more, the love of Jesus is not a one time thing, there is no limit to it. And so each day we sin against him, and each day, our all-knowing God loves us anyway, forgiving us and being in our lives and exposing himself to more of our sin tomorrow. (Lamentations 3:21-23, Psalm 100:5)

In all my unworthiness, God, in all his greatness, loves me. Who could possibly be so unworthy as to not deserve my love?

There is no one.

I’ve prayed for the last year that God would give me His heart of love, and I can say with confidence that I now have a fuller understanding of what that means, and that I have a heart more like his than ever before. It’s worth all the pain it took to get there. What a joy and what a blessing. Praise God!