pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: forgiveness


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Simply Love 

Reading: Hosea 11: 5-11

We have a varied view of God.  Since God is vast and far beyond human understanding, it makes sense that we cannot pin down an exact image or view of God.  On one end of the spectrum we see God as judge and in that role God decides on consequences and hands out punishment for our choices.  On the other end we see God as love, giver of new mercies every morning and of endless grace and other blessings.

God is just and in our relationship expects obedience and faithfulness from us.  In the Old Testament God gave the people the covenant to uphold and the Law to follow, with its accompanying sets of sacrifices.  In the New Testament God brought the new covenant into being through the life and witness of Jesus Christ.  In the latter part of the New Testament and for us today, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  Even though we have all of this to help us be obedient and to follow God’s will and ways for our lives, we so often fail.  Even when we fail, God loves us.  Even when we fail time after time, God continues to love us.

The constant giving of love, mercy, and forgiveness that we experience from God transforms our lives.  We are made new creations, without blemish, every time we seek God’s throne of grace.  We are drawn in over and over and over again into God’s transforming love, marvelling that it is never withheld, that it is never conditional, and that it is given without cost.  God simply loves us, imperfect and sinful as we are.  God simply loves us.  For this we say, thanks be to God.


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Restoring a Sinner

Reading: Psalm 85

The psalmist expresses a cycle that is common to us all.  The people of Israel sinned and found God’s forgiveness.  Time passed and they sinned again.  The writer expresses the need for God to forgive the people once again.  The psalmist calls for God’s unfailing love to once again yield mercy and grace.  The writer reminds themselves and God that God promises peace to His people.  The the writer again requests salvation from God.

It is a cycle we often repeat as well.  Earlier in one’s Christian walk, the cycle is repeated more often but throughout life we cycle through the sin-repentance-forgiveness pattern over and over.  Being human, frail and weak as we are, we will fall into sin.  Yet God, being unfailing love and unending grace, responds over and over again with forgiveness and an invitation back into right relationship with Him.

As we look back over our journey of faith we can identify times when we came to realize that we had been sinning.  It was not obvious to us before we reached a certain maturity level in our faith.  As we continue to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ we come to junctures where we realize that what we were doing was really gossip or being jealous or lust or …  What was before simply part of who we are is one day seen as sin.  So we repent and think ‘not again’ as we are now aware that a certain behavior was sinful.  But like most sins, this one will return again.  Satan knows our weak spots and will continue to hammer away at them for a while.

As we mature in our faith and our relationship with Christ grows stronger, the time between recurrences of a sin will lengthen out.  And being fully human, we know that we may fall back into that sin once in a while.  But as we do mature, we recognize it sooner and come to a place where we stop at the temptation to gossip or whatever.  And then we begin to wrestle with other sins in our lives!

Into our constant battle with sin, into our human weakness, steps God’s love and grace.  God’s love and grace are far greater than our sin will ever be.  It is so great that nothing in all of creation is able to separate us from the love of God.  May we ever be thankful for God’s unfailing love and unending grace that always restores a sinner like me back to the true and loving relationship that is life itself.


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Calling, Waiting, Redeeming

Reading: Hosea 1:10

The Israelites of Hosea’s day have broken the covenant relationship they once had with God.  Their choices have led them far from God.  Like any parent, He is surely disappointed and maybe even a little mad, but the love for them is as strong as ever.  As parents we too have been in this situation with our own children, loving them in spite of their actions, words, or behaviors.  And like our heavenly Father, we long for them to repent of their poor choices and to return to the ways they were taught.  We so long for this because this is where our relationship is at its best, both for us and for our children.  God is no different.

With the Israelites and with us today, God continues to ever call us back into a right relationship with Him.  His promise to them is to make them a mighty nation – as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore.  His promise to us is somehow more personal.  God’s promises to love us, to care for us, to watch over us, to bless us all still remain.  As His children, we are still God’s covenant people.  Yet through Jesus the relationship became more personal and intimate.  We can relate to Jesus’ human nature as a friend yet His divine nature is also present, revealing His power and majesty.  Through His resurrection Jesus imparts the Holy Spirit, a living presence of Jesus that comes to dwell in us once we accept Him as Lord and Savior.

It is through the voice and movement of the Holy Spirit that God continues to call us, His children, back to Him over and over again.  No matter what our choices, God still seeks to keep us in a righteous relationship with Him.  When we stumble, He calls out.  When we sin, He redeems.  When we wander away, He waits patiently, continuing to seek us out.  For God’s amazing and wonderful far-reaching, never-ending, life-changing love, we are ever grateful.  For all of His love, mercy, and grace we say thanks be to God.


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Fruitful Witness 

Reading: Colossians 1: 1-8

The Bible is full of stories of the Word bearing fruit.  The parable of the sower is perhaps the best know story of fruitfulness as it tells of the witness of the believer producing a crop 30, 60, or 100 fold.  In the great commission Jesus compels all disciples to go forth to make disciples of all nations, to grow fruit everywhere we go to spread the kingdom of God.  The Word also speaks of the fruit of our faith in our own lives: peace, joy, patience, kindness,…

Paul opens his letter to the Colossians by commending them for the ways they are being fruitful.  He comments them for their strong faith in Jesus Christ and for the love for one another that grows out of their faith.  Then Paul notes that this love and faith is bearing fruit and growing as others in their community experience these things.  In turn, they are coming to know Christ through the faithful witness of this congregation.  How the Holy Spirit takes the witness to the love and truth of Jesus Christ and causes it to become faith in an unbeliever is one of the great works of God.  There is much rejoicing in heaven each time another accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior!

God’s call to churches everywhere is still the same as we see here in Colossians.  He calls upon us to continue to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.  This includes the corners as well: the neighbor next door, the coworker one cubicle over, the classmate across the lab table…  As we bear witness to our faith in our every day lives we are living out the Gospel and we are planting seeds.  As we practice justice, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, and love we are bearing witness to Jesus.  As we allow the Gospel to bear fruit in our lives we are planting seeds of faith in other’s lives.  May we be fruitful today in our witness and may the Holy Spirit move powerfully in people’s hearts.  May our witness come to bear much fruit for the kingdom of God.


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Unending Love, Amazing Grace 

Reading: Amos 7: 10-17

Can you remember getting in trouble when you were little?  When we were first learning to follow the rules often there were times when we simply felt that the rule did not apply to us or that the rule was wrong.  The ‘rules’ and following them were outside of our own little world.  Sad thing is that this is still occasionally the case for us in adulthood.  The pull of what we want outweighs what we see as the immediate consequences and we stray outside the lines.

King Jeroboam had strayed outside the lines.  The king and the nation of Israel have engaged in sinful living.  They have oppressed the poor, worshiped false gods, and no longer follow God’s laws.  Earlier in the book of Amos, God had issued a call to repentance through the prophet.  The king and people ignored it.  Even after God has threatened to destroy the kingdom and to send the people into exile, Israel continues to live in sin.  Because of their great self-centeredness, they angrily refuse to be accountable to God and they tell Amos to go away.

Can you recall a time when you were enjoying life just a bit too much?  Can you remember a time when you justified a poor choice or behavior because you were enjoying the results or the outcome?  At times and in seasons of our faith it can be all too easy to get off track and to find ourselves where we should not be.  Despite nudges to repent from the Holy Spirit and calls from friends and family, we struggle to break free and step back inside of God’s love and guidance.

But God continues to work on our hearts and our family and friends pray and keep trying to hold us accountable.  We come to see our sin and repent.  God, in His unlimited love and grace, pours out forgiveness and we are restored to a right relationship with Him.  Our sin is wiped away in the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ.  We are humbled by God’s amazing grace and unending love.  We find ourselves transformed and have grown in our faith.  As a new creation in Christ we are ready to again live as a child of God.  We look back and wonder how we ever got ‘there’.  We promise to never go there again, but Satan does not give up.  Sin and temptation never go away.  Yet we also know that God is greater than he who is living in this world.  His amazing grace and unending love will always triumph.  For this we shout, thanks be to God!!


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Reaping Good, Always

Reading: Galatians 6: 7-16

Paul opens this section if his letter to the Galatians with two key points.  The first is that we reap what we sow.  The second is that we must not grow weary of doing what is right.  While these two ideas are directly related, each point of emphasis has its own challenges.

We have all experienced the ‘reap what you sow’ concept both with the good we do and with the evil we allow into our lives.  When we sow good into the world, we so often receive good in return.  For example, when we serve a meal at the local mission, it is good but we are usually the ones mist blessed by it.  On a more basic level, when we are kind and loving towards our fellow man they tend to be loving in return.  On the other end of the spectrum, when we sow evil by allowing greed, anger, gossip, gluttony, … into our lives, then we hurt both others and ourselves.  It is a hard road to only sow good with Satan and his emissaries always working to tempt us.

Paul’s second point is to not weary of doing what is right.  As Christians our natural bent in life is to do what is right in the world.  It is the example set by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Our natural disposition as disciples is to be a servant to those in our lives.  Jesus calls for us to die to self so that we can better see the needs of others and to act accordingly.  For me this us easiest when the task is simple.  I could help an elderly woman to her car with her groceries all day long.  The challenge comes when there is risk to ourselves in serving another or in correcting a wrong that is occurring.  It can be hard to do what us right over and over.  Like Peter we ask, ‘how many times?’ – how many times must I forgive them?  How many times must I help the same person?  Jesus’answer was a simple ‘forever’ – just as long as God will forgive and love us.  Just as long.

May we find strength, grace, love, forgiveness, and encouragement in our saving relationship with Jesus Christ so that we may reap good to build His kingdom here and so that we may not grow weary in our own pursuit of His kingdom in our lives.


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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.