pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: forgiveness


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Grace and Love

Reading: Luke 8: 26-39

Jesus is willing to go anyplace and into any situation to save someone.  The man possessed by demons lives among the dead.  The caves provided shelter for the outcast man but also make him unclean.  He lives amongst swine – animals that are unclean.  And to top it all off, he is possessed by demons.  Yet Jesus strides right past all that would keep others away and casts out the many demons to make the man whole again.  Jesus heals him so he can leave behind all that makes him unclean and so that he can return to life in the community.

Many of us today live with what we could consider demons.  Both within our heads and from culture and society we hear voices that seek to lure us in and to draw us away from God.  Bright shiny objects and the draw of power and position call our name.  There are many things that draw us towards sin and temptation as well.  One could consider this ‘legion’ of things that seek to pull us away from God and realize we are each in a pitched spiritual battle to stay in a right relationship with God.

At times we will succumb to temptation and to the things of the world.  We too will become ‘unclean’ as we are covered in our sin.  But even in this state, Jesus still calls our name.  He still seeks to draw us to Him so He can cleanse us of all that entraps us.  Like the unclean demon-possessed man, sometimes we also ask, “Jesus, what do you want with me”?  We wonder how He could love a sinner like us.  We wonder why He would seek to come near us in our broken state.  But Jesus loves us all, no matter who we are or what we’ve done.  Allow His grace to cover your sins.  Allow His love to wash over you.  Allow His love to make you whole again.


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Labels

Reading: Luke 7:36 to 8:3

Labels are a dangerous thing.  Labels are barriers that can inhibit ministry.  Simon the Pharisee labels people.  The woman is a ‘sinner’.  This means to keep away from her lest she make him unclean as well.  Jesus is a ‘teacher’.  He has some good things to share and maybe a few are even applicable to Simon’s life.  But teachers are human, just like him, so they require no allegiance, no commitment, no special status.  And this ‘teacher’ allows a ‘sinner’ to touch Him, so Jesus is almost a sinner too; certainly He is at least ‘unclean’.

We too like to label.  We like to label people because it allows us to put them in boxes and because it allows us to keep them at a distance.  And like the Pharisee, these labels sometimes allow us to dismiss people from our thoughts like he did with the woman.  She was invisible to him even though she stood crying in his own home, right there in front of him.  How often have we driven or walked past a homeless person with a sign asking for help?  How often have we ignored the unkempt woman sleeping in the back pew during church?  We notice them briefly, apply our label – lazy, drunk, outcast… – and move on.

Jesus said to Simon, “He who is forgiven little lives little”.  For the woman she is forgiven much as Jesus restores her to righteousness.  As a new creation she can now go on to love others as Jesus first loved her.  For Simon, he is unwilling to see past a label so he cannot even begin to offer forgiveness for the judgment of others that he had in his heart.  Therefore he will also live others little.

What allowed Jesus to look past ‘sinner’ and to see the brokenness inside the woman?  What can we do to look past lazy, drunk, outcast… to begin to know what is broken inside of others?  The key is in the reverse of Jesus’ statement to Simon.  May we, as followers of Christ and as witnesses to His love, also offer much love to those in need of healing so that they too can begin to experience His forgiveness and can then begin to find healing for the brokenness in their lives.  May we not stop at the label but step beyond the barriers that keep us from sharing Christ with the world in need.


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Offering a Witness

Reading: Psalm 96: 1-9

Psalm 96 calls us to sing praises to God and to declare His gift of salvation day after day.  It reminds us that God is great and majestic and strong.  It urges us to bring an offering to Him and to worship God in the splendor of His holiness.  In these opening verses of the Psalm we get a clear picture of who God is and what our response should be.  The overarching theme of this Psalm is the call to declare our unfaltering allegiance to the one true God.  This is both a corporate and a personal call.

As the church, no matter what the denomination, we are called to proclaim the good news, to worship God alone, and to bring relief to the oppressed and the needy.  As the church this is what God clearly expects of us.  The two greatest commandments – to love God and to live neighbor – are lived out by doing these three things.  Ask a non-believer what a church should do and odds are they will name at least two of these three.  In an ideal world, all churches would be growing in their love of God and changing the world for the better each day.  All churches should be known for their compassion, love, witness, forgiveness, and service.  And all of God’s people said, “Amen”!

But in order for the church to be known for these characteristics, as members of these churches we must first be known individually for these traits.  No one comes to the faith because of a church.  They come to faith by first experiencing what faith lived out looks like.  They experience this vicariously when one loves or serves them in a radical or unexpected way.  It draws them in and opens their hearts so that the Holy Spirit can begin to work in them.  This day and each day, may our lives be the offering we bring to God and may our lives be a living witness to the splendor of His holiness.


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Peace, Justification, Mercy

Reading: Romans 5: 1-2

Our faith brings peace with God, a status of being justified, and an outpouring of His grace.  Once we have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of our life, we are made into a new creation within our new relationship with Him.  Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which we celebrated yesterday on Pentecost, we are forever changed.

Instead of living with the fears and worries of the world, we now walk in God’s peace.  We walk here because we know that as a new creation we are a child of God.  We are now in His hands.  Our hope rests secure.

The Spirit of God works in us to justify us or to make us right before God.  Through the act of taking on all of our sins on the cross, Jesus paid the price for those sins.  Justice has been administered so we do not need to live under the weight of our sins.  Because of His blood that was shed, our sins are atoned for.  All we need to do to be justified before God is to repent and to confess our sins.  Then we again can walk in His ways.  We bear no punishment; the price has been paid.  Therefore, once we seek His forgiveness, we are again justified before God.

Through faith in Christ we go one step further: mercy.  Forgiveness says our sins are not held against us.  Mercy says they are forgotten.  This is a big step.  As humans we tend to forgive but not to forget.  But not so with God.  There is no giant Rolodex of our sins in heaven.  Once we repent and confess our sins to God, His mercy kicks in and for God our sins are no more.  This demonstrates the depth of His love for each of us.  Nothing we can do lessens His love for us.  For the peace He brings, for the justified relationship He offers, and for the mercy that makes us pure as new fallen snow, we simply say thanks be to God.


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Come!

Reading: Revelation 22: 12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Today’s reading comes from the last chapter of the last book of the Bible.  To me it is full of hope and promise; it is the ‘why’ to living as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.  At the very beginning, in Genesis 1, there is the same sense of hope and promise as God creates the world and all that is in it.  God created in perfection, with each act being deemed ‘good’.  To me this not only speaks of God’s desire for His children to find joy, peace, contentment, and love in this life but also of His ultimate promise of what will once again be.  In this we find our hope.  In the closing words of the Bible, we are invited to return to and to participate in the return of Jesus, to enter the new paradise that will come with His return.

Jesus identifies Himself in today’s text as the beginning and the end. He was there at the start of creation and will be there again when all is restored and made new.  Sometimes though, we look at the blip of almost 30 years as Jesus’ only time here between the first and last of times.  But in reality He is always present here on earth.  Through the actions of the Holy Spirit and through the lives of His followers, Jesus is a constant presence here in our world.  The invitation to ‘Come!’ is one we as His disciples need to continue to call out to all who are thirsty and in need of the free gift that Jesus Christ offers.

This free gift that comes through faith in Jesus is the first step to living into the joy, peace, contentment, and love that God desires each of us to find.  Through the blood that He shed on the cross we can find grace and mercy to lay our sins and burdens down so that forgiveness washes them away and restores us to a right relationship with God.  This allows us each day to be clean and pure and Holy.  This allows us to face the temptations and struggles of life knowing that every day Jesus continues to say, ‘Come!’  As we live in this reality and hear this call every day, may we too call out to others, inviting them to ‘Come!’ and to know Jesus.


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Love with All

Reading: John 14: 23-24

When asked by the teacher of the Law what the greatest commandment was, Jesus responded with two and they both had to do with love.  The first was to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  This is a tall order.  In my mind the Word ‘all’ means 100% of the time with 100% of my being.  I can certainly love God a lot most of the time, but all?  The second was to love your neighbor as self but soon became love neighbor as I first loved you.  In the first form the love was a human love.  When Jesus added “as I first loved you”, it took it up a notch.  Jesus loved all people all of the time.  There is that ‘all’ word again.

In today’s passage, Jesus reveals one of the reasons we are to love God.  When we love God, we obey God.  If this is the choice we make and the path we try to walk daily, then the second command becomes easier.  Jesus promises that when we obey and follow Him out of love, then He will come and dwell in our hearts.  It is a much deeper connection to God when all we do is done out of that love that now dwells in our heart as the Spirit leads and guides us in living love out.  It is miles beyond trying to love God and neighbor because that’s what the Law or other parts of the Bible says we are supposed to do.

And in reality we struggle at times to love God with all that we are.  We drift, we doubt, things don’t go our way, we get too busy.  We also have a hard time loving that guy or a girl like that.  We are unique people and sometimes another’s uniqueness is hard for us to understand or to be around.  The goods news, though, is that when we fall short of ‘all’, it is not the end.  Not even close.  Part of “as I first loved you” is His never-ending promise of love.  It is a love that wipes away our failure and covers it with grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  Whether through prayer, time in the Word, in worship, or any other means that reconnects us to God, we can again walk in His love, feel His Spirit dwelling in our hearts, and again begin to walk seeking to love God with all that we are and to love others as He first and still loves us. 🙂


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Forever…

Reading: Psalm 30: 6-12

God rescued David and his grateful response is to praise God and give Him thanks forever.  Forever is a very long time.  It really far exceeds anything we can grasp.  When we say ‘forever’ we are making a pretty big commitment.  Although our concept of forever is limited, sometimes it is the word that best expresses what we feel at the time.  Perhaps the best example of this are the wedding vows that speak of forever.  For the couple standing there, so deeply in love, forever expresses it best.

Sometimes, though, we use forever in a promise to try and leverage God.  We pray, “If you will ___ God, I’ll ___ forever”.  We pray the ” If only…” prayers with a promise tied to forever.  But even in these instances, we use forever to try and sum up just how much we want the answer we want.  It is a word we use to try and demonstrate our great commitment to whatever we are praying for or about.

God also uses forever.  God promises to love us forever.  Underlying this promise and His other promises is an understanding on God’s part of how long this really is.  God promises to forgive our sins and mistakes forever.  In spite of His knowledge of who we are, His promise is still to forever, without any limits.  God promises to be with us forever.  He was and is and will always be.  Through the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, God  abides with us forever in this life.  Lastly, God promises us forever.  Once we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God promises us the gift of eternal life.  We begin this life here and now but it will continue on forever even when we leave these earthly tents.  For these promises, we offer our grateful praise forever.


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The Way

Reading: John 20: 1-18

Jesus’ life and story are marked by a few events that are very significant to our faith.  First, the incarnate birth – born partly human to a mother and partly divine to a heavenly father.  Born of a virgin, without sin since birth.  His birth and the events surrounding it indicate to us that Jesus is a unique and special gift from God.

At the end of His life, Jesus experiences two other significant events.  The resurrection and ascension come close together.  Between His holy birth and divine death, Jesus teaches and heals for about three years, providing us an example of how to live and love both God and our fellow man.

While Jesus did raise people from the dead during His earthly ministry, He raised them back to mortal life.  In the resurrection of Jesus, it was God who raised Jesus to immortal or heavenly life.  Jesus’ resurrection is significant for both of these reasons.  Just as God alone initiated Jesus’ human birth, God alone brings Jesus back home to heaven.  God welcomes Jesus back to His eternal home as Jesus returns to the Father.

The ascension, or returning to God’s right hand, is the second significant event at the end of Jesus’ earthly life.  Jesus tells Mary, “I am returning to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.”  In this statement Jesus declares where He is going and also includes us in the relationship.  God is our Father and our God too.

As Jesus returns to His rightful place beside God, He returns changed.  He has lived on earth.  He has felt what we feel.  He returns to heaven and now intercedes for you and me.  He now stands between God and us.  The perfect lamb who was slain now offers mercy and forgiveness and grace.  He who was without sin now provides the way for us who struggle with sin the way to eternal life.  He ascended so that one day we too could ascend.  For this incomprehensible gift, we say  thanks be to God!

 


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Wouldn’t We?

Reading: John 13: 21-33

“One of you will betray me”.  That must have been quite the bombshell.  These twelve men have  invested three years of their lives in following Jesus.  They have stuck with Him, certainly at a personal cost to their families and other relationships.  It has been a sacrifice in other ways as well.  Yet at twelve have remained with Jesus to this point.

In our hearts and minds, we each think we are devout to Jesus.  Until we are not.  How often our faith life is moving along solidly and in an instant we have said or thought something that brought instant conviction?  Surely not I, Lord.  As life is cruising along well and we feel connected to the Son, we do something and the remorse and guilt come flooding in.  Surely not I, Jesus.

In most cases when we have been tempted or stumble into sin, we recognize it quickly.  When we are sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit, we realize our sin quickly and repent and seek forgiveness and restoration.  Then and there we are brought back into a right relationship with God.

We all are never really far from, “One of you will…”. And like the disciples we can also get lost in our own worlds.  When we ourselves are wrestling with temptation or sin or when we have sinned and are struggling with the guilt or our own inability to forgive ourselves, we can be like the eleven – so lost in the ” Is it I?” question that we do not notice the evil around us.  The eleven were so inwardly focused that they did not notice Judas leaving.

If we were there we would have noticed and gone after him.  Wouldn’t have we?  Wouldn’t we?  Maybe.  It is too easy to think of someone who used to come to church.  In our own struggles may we realize that all struggle.  In this realization, may we become more aware of our brothers and sisters in Christ, being vigilant to love and care for one another.  May we each seek out and help the lost or wandering sheep back into the flock.


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The Same Love

Reading: Luke 15: 1-3 and 11b-32

Today’s parable is sometimes read as about being lost.  All people experience times when we would consider ourselves to be ‘lost’.  Maybe our time was short, like at college, or maybe it was a longer season in life.  Maybe we had an extended period in life when we lived a life we really do not want to recall.

The younger son in this parable certainly fits this description.  After a period of wild living he comes to place of remorse and returns home.  He know his choices have been wrong and he acknowledges that he has sinned again God and against his earthly father.  Both offer compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and accept him back without any conditions or stipulations.  They treat him like he has never been gone.  That is what is so amazing about grace.  It is a great example and reminder for us.  No matter what we have done and no matter what we have become, God eagerly awaits our return so that we can be reconciled to Him.

The older brother is certainly lost as well.  He may have never physically left the estate, but he seems lost to his father’s love as well.  He reminds me of one who comes to church out of a sense of obligation, just going through the motions and never really connecting to God or anybody.  There but always wanting to be someplace else.  The older son is showing up every day for work because he is supposed to, not because he loves the job or the boss.  We see this manifest itself in his reaction to how his brother is received back home.  Forgiveness is difficult in his hardened heart.  But it is possible.

The father demonstrates the same love for both sons – the physically lost and the spiritually lost.  He runs to both and offers love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance.  No matter what we have done and no matter how lost we are, God offers all of His children the same.