Last Sunday, we visited a new church.  It was an interesting experience.  Amazingly enough, we didn’t know any of the worship songs that were sung.  (Hubby and I were both worship leaders at our previous church.)  Worship was 45 minutes long and only 4 songs were sung.  We aren’t quite into that, but people were entering into worship, so that it what really counts.  The sermon was great…and was something that we needed to hear.  It was about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a necessary thing for Christians, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  Here are two of the things that I struggle with when it comes to forgiving:  1.)  God requires that we ask Him for forgiveness.  So why do we have to forgive even if people don’t ask us for forgiveness and 2.) Does forgiving mean forgetting?

I finally have an answer that makes sense to me.

God offers forgiveness even before we ask.  We just have to ask for it to receive it.  Therefore, I must take the hurt and the resentment and consciously make the choice to forgive the person who hurt me.  The forgiveness is their’s for the taking.  If they choose to receive it and are genuinely sorry for what they have done, then that is when the forgetting comes in.  God doesn’t welcome us into His family until we acknowledge and receive the sacrifice of His son.  We cannot fellowship with God until we repent and receive the forgiveness that He offers.  We are not required to fellowship with a person who continually hurts us and is never truly sorry.

Now here is my practical application.  X hurt me horribly…physically,  mentally and emotionally.  He has never apologized (at least not genuinely) and he not changed.  I have chosen to release the hurt and forgive him.  HOWEVER, since I know that he has not changed, I will still continue to protect myself from him.  I do not forget that he is a very dangerous man, but by offering forgiveness, I am saying that I will not harbor resentment towards him, even if he never accepts my forgiveness.

Here is my next practical application.  For the past few months, I have been very angry at our previous pastor.  He hurt my husband and I and he continues to lead our previous church down the wrong path.  But I am going to choose to forgive him…right here, right now.

Dear Pastor,

You have hurt my husband and I in ways that up until now were unimaginable to us.  You have lied about us, mistreated us, and have attempted to pull our vision away from God and onto you.  But I am choosing to forgive you.

I forgive you for saying hurtful and untrue things about me.

I forgive you for purposely undermining the ministry that God called us into.

I forgive you for taking advantage of us.

I forgive you for using us for your own financial gain.

I forgive you for telling people things that we told you in confidence.

I forgive you tearing us out of the lives of the teenagers who depended on us.

I forgive you for your selfish leadership.

I forgive you for not caring that you hurt us.

I promise that if there is ever a day that you wish to restore the relationship that you so callously destroyed, I will still offer this same forgiveness.

I don’t know who originally came up with the idea of writing a letter to your 19 or 20-year-old self, but it is brilliant. So I am going to jump on the bandwagon along with fellow bloggettes Kristen from Dancing in the Margins and Rachel at Musings of a Future Pastor’s Wife.

Dear 20 year old me,

You are going to make the biggest mistakes of your life this year. And I know that there is nothing that I can say to stop them from happening. But I want to tell you that God knows that you are going to make these mistakes and He loves you anyway.

You are going to spend a terrifying 4 weeks in the hospital because of complications from your appendectomy. Your heart will stop and you will catch a vision of heaven. You will ache to stay there and will be angry when the doctors revive you. I know that you long more than anything to be with your cousin who just died, but he will wait for you. God has bigger plans for you on earth, my girl. Just be patient because you won’t find them for a few years.

You will go on a missions trip and will come back on-fire for God and head right to Bible college. You will see miracles happen. But you will still look for love in the wrong places. I wish that I could tell you to stay at Bible college, but I know you won’t listen and will leave after your first semester there. But please remember to tuck those miracles away in your heart because those miracles will bring you back to The One Who Truly Cares for you. It will be the memory of those miracles that will someday remind you that God was with you all along…even when you weren’t with Him.

Another Valentine’s Day will come. You will be more lonely than ever and make a decision that will haunt you for the rest of your life. I wish that I could make you not go to the bowling ally to pick up your step-sister. I wish that I could tell you to not listen when he tells you how pretty you are. I wish that you didn’t long to hear those words so much. But you do. And they make you feel good. For the first time in your life you will feel wanted and needed and beautiful. I don’t want to take that feeling away from you, I just wish that you have found it in Christ, not in the arms of a boy who will take your innocence and betray your trust.

I wish that I could tell you that the next several years will be fun and easy for you, but I can’t. You will continue to blindly look for love all the while you will be traveling down a road of destruction. I wish that I could tell you that you will run into the arms of God instead of the arms of man, but I can’t. Your mistakes will leave you shattered and feeling unworthy to ever turn to God again. But Sweetie, you can. He created you knowing that you would make these mistakes. He created you planning to use you regardless of your mistakes.

What I can tell you is that in a few years, when you have reached your lowest point and have no where else to turn, God will bring the most amazing man into your life and will give you a second chance. Just hang in there because everything will change and life will eventually become better than you have ever dreamed.

You are going to spend years dealing with the consequences of your decisions and you are going to want to beat yourself up over your mistakes. Don’t do it. As soon as you ask God to forgive you, He will forget them…you should to.

Love,

Your Older (And Hopefully Wiser) Self

Today an innocent question got me doing a lot of thinking. The younger sister of an old friend asked me, “May I ask why you married him?” She wasn’t talking about my current (and wonderful) husband. She meant the mistake that I made years ago. (Let’s refer to him as“X”)

That is a question that I have asked myself over and over. Why did I marry him? There are many difficult answers to this question.

I married him because he needed me.

I married him because I wanted the family that I never had.

I married him because I thought that I could help him change.

I married him because I had already slept with him.

The first three reasons are internal reasons. My childhood was rough, so I was looking for internal needs to be satisfied. I told myself that he could fill those needs.

The last reason is external. All my life, I was told that good, Christian girls only slept with one man….their husband. So in order to be a good Christian girl, I married the one man that I had slept with. I knew that I had done things a bit backwards, but I thought that was the only way to rectify my mistake. You see, because I needed my internal needs to be satisfied, I gave in to the external pressure. He made me feel loved. He made me feel wanted. So I did it. And once I did it, there was no going back because I knew that I was already damaged goods. “They” (every Christian in my life) had convinced me of that.

Once people started guessing that I was sleeping with X, they started judging and ostracizing me. The Christian non-profit group where I volunteered told me that my services were no longer needed. I was no longer put on the church nursery schedule. People who used to greet me on Sunday mornings disappeared. And when I finally stopped going to church, no one called. Had they called, maybe things would have been different. Had they told me that they still loved me even though I made a bad choice, maybe I wouldn’t have married him. Had they reminded me of God’s grace and mercy, maybe I would have ran to them the first time X hit me. But they didn’t and X made sure that I realized that he was the only person who “truly loved me” and that he was the only person who would “ever want me”. They told me I was worthless.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am NOT blaming anyone for my choice. I made the choices that I made and I bear the responsibility for them. But I am angry. Angry because the one place that should have been Jesus in skin for me wasn’t. I am angry for all the other girls out there who “they” have made feel like damaged goods.

I can understand firsthand why people sometimes view Christians as judgmental and uncaring. I can also understand how easy it is for people to turn away from Christ because of how His followers sometimes act.

What I can’t understand is why it is so hard for some Christians to offer the same grace, love and forgiveness that Christ offered to them.

I pray that someday, God will allow me show love to someone who is like I was…someone whose actions may be unlovable, but who just desperately needs to be loved…a girl who needs to be loved on, understood and offered grace. What I would give to wrap my arms around that girl and tell her that she is precious. That she is valued. That she is loved, not just by God, but also by me. That she doesn’t have to make the same mistakes that I did.  That she is NOT unforgivable.

So last night, my hubby read my post about our ministry becoming our life and he said, “You know what? I think that you are right!” (What wife doesn’t like to hear those words?)

But then I got thinking about how we let it happen. And I realized that to me, having a “ministry” made me feel important and of value to the body of Christ.

You see, I struggle with that…not feeling important enough or worthy enough to be called a child of God. And yes, I do know that no one is worthy enough and that it is ONLY through Christ that we are made worthy. But that enemy of ours keeps screaming at me, “Hey Girl! I know you! I know how much you have messed up! I know your past! You will never be able to make up for turning your back on God when you were younger!”

My heart knows that God has forgiven me. My heart knows that God created me, knowing that I would mess up and fall away from Him, but He still created me!! And more than that, He created me knowing that I would mess up, but still desiring my worship of Him and still intending to use me to help lead others to Him! What an amazing God! How unworthy I am!

I hate the battle between my flesh and my spirit. My heart and spirit yearn to be completely lined up with Christ and His will for my life. My sinful flesh longs to be recognized…to be told I am important and valued to this world.

Why do I long for recognition from a sinful world when I have recognition from a Perfect God?

I find great solace in knowing that the apostle Paul also struggled with his sin nature.

Paul wrote in Romans 7:18-19, 24 “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing….What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Man! If Paul struggle with his sinful nature, then I guess I can’t complain when I must still battle mine. It is yet another on going process in becoming new.