As Christian persons, we relate and parent out of Whose we are, who we are, and why we are here.   Our person and our purpose are cut from the same cloth.  This means we are to be Christian marriage partners and Christian parents.  The common element is in Whose we are and why.  Our goal in Part 1 was to see that aspect of our lives to unfold in how we relate to our partner and how it impacts our parenting, thus our familying as a whole.

Our greatest challenge in living as a child of God is the matter of growing up into the full image of Jesus Christ.  To be a fully human, fully alive person is to enter into the process of becoming like Him and to partner with His Holy Spirit in the growth we are to experience day by day.  He is our Example in all that we are becoming.  Since our marriage belongs to Him and we are His partners in the raising of His children, then what we are becoming in Him is key to every single relationship within our lives.  How we relate to our partner is to help him/her become more like Him.  To do that I must become more and more like Him.  How I relate to His children is to help them become more like Him.  To do this they must be able to see Him in me.  We all learn of the unknown through observing the known.  I owe it to them to share Him in ways they can come to grasp and emulate.  Herein lies our purpose as His own.

In all of life we face no greater challenge than this: growing up into Him.  This is a life-challenge.  In reality there is more growth ahead of me than behind me.  But on a daily basis, I know I am heading in the right direction when what I was yesterday is not what I am to day, and what I will be tomorrow is more than today.  As long as I can measure the growth, then I know I am headed where He wants me to be.  And at the same time, the progress can be hindered or encouraged, and my own insides determine which it will be.

What This Means for My Marriage

It means becoming a whole person as a marriage partner so I can be the person he/she needs me to be to meet that person’s deep need.  My encouragement in his/her growing up into what God intends for us both.  Love is far more concerned for the partner than for one’s self.  This needs to be evident in the relationship long before the “I do” is said.  However, too often what is evident during the courtship disappears soon after the honeymoon ends.

During pre-marital counseling with one young couple I asked the husband to be what he brought as a person to the relationship; what he had to offer his intended bride.  There was silence.  When I asked him what he expected of the relationship, he could respond with item after item.  His expectations were clear and clearly articulated, but what he had to offer of himself to her had not really crossed his mind.  In some serious reflection that followed, it was obvious he had not really considered what she was going to find in him to meet her real needs for closeness and intimacy.  She was far better prepared to answer than he was.

Love is a need satisfying relationship in a dependable way.  What she needs from me is love, in good measure, and in dependable, life-changing ways.  If I am going to be able to love her with His love, to meet her heart-hungers in full measure, and give her the security of knowing this love is focused more on her than on self, then she gets the message: we are in this together for the long haul.

If the focus of each partner is on giving, each will never lack an abundance of receiving.  But the focus has to be on the giving for that is the cement that binds them through the thick and thin of relating.  But the moment the focus shifts to getting rather than giving, the relationship shifts from the positive to the negative.  Know that every time you focus on her real needs she will always reciprocate in kind.  In some ways you are showing her what you yourself need.  She’ll pick up on the message and it will be returned.  But whether it is or not, love focuses on the other’s need.  Love’s reward is in its ability to love.

What This Means for My Parenting

It means becoming a whole person as a parent parenting out of that wholeness so I can be the person my children need me to be.  Their deep need is encouragement in their growing up into what God intends for them.  A whole person has so much to give and learns in age-appropriate ways how to give it.  However, any needy person gets so involved in what they perceive as their own need that they cannot truly see the real need of the child.  They expect the child to meet their need as if the child is there for them and not them being there for the child.  When I see them as God’s children with me as His partner in their raising, the focus is on them and not on what I get out of this process.  With that, what is in it for me?  Everything God intends.  No one ever serves as His partner without being blessed from A to Z and back again.  This way the children receive all they need, and it proves to be more than I could have ever given them when going on my own.

God’s parenting skills far outweigh mine, in every way.  And what they need most from me is what they receive from Him through me when I am at my best in my relating to Him on their behalf.  He is far more patient than I am.  His loving does not tire or get distracted as mine might.  He never is caught flatfooted when life changes and they need something more than I can give on my own.  And best of all, He never parents as I was parented.  What I truly want for them is the best possible parenting skills and He is my Example.  Going it on my own is not what they need from me.

In order to be the best parent I can be all of me is engaged in the process of becoming the best I can be.  This means putting aside many lessons from my own past and seeking sources and helps that allow me to parent in age-appropriate ways with the kids entrusted to me.  It’s one thing for me to expect them to grow up into my world.  It’s another thing for me to assist them in growing up into their own world.  In many ways our worlds will overlap, but in other ways theirs is nothing like mine and they need my help in achieving within their own.  For example, the math of my day is not the math of theirs.  If I try to help them with what I learned at their ages, they will make a mess of things in their own Public School education.  I got Algebra in high school; they have it a lot earlier.  What world am I helping them prepare for?

When it comes to values and morality, their Public School education is anything but spiritual, yet I want them to know the best of both worlds: the secular and the spiritual.  So I cannot afford to allow the public schools to teach them values based on the least common denominator when what I want for them is the values of our faith and home life.  They may be in sex education as Junior Highers with classmates already sexually active.  How do they learn a Christian standard?  Not many churches are going to help at this level.  Most leave it to the home and that means us.  Things like premarital sex, sexual orientation, morality and Christian values need to be home-based then reinforced by the church and good literature for these are far too important to leave to a public school education where standards have to be neutral and generalized.  Look at the results of this in life around us today.  What are the views of marriage, family, home life, and wholesomeness they are exposed to?  Our responsibility as their parents exceeds what is available to them.  As Christians we need to accept our full responsibility and care for them in what they receive from us in the home.  We have to be all they need us to be.  And we need help and Christian resources by which to guide them.

What This Means for Me as God’s Person

It means learning to live and relate as God intends.  He wants me to be a great partner and parent to His kids.  When I am able to see God’s kids as His and only on loan to me, then I am in a position to be able to see the image of Christ living in them.  They are formed in His image; if that image remains unmarred, their relationship with Him and me will remain as it needed to be.  It is marred when sin enters the equation, but when He is in it, grace and forgiveness prevail to the Father’s glory and to our own joy.

It means becoming God’s person.  This allows Him to then be to me what I need of Him.  With Him living in me my partner and His kids will receive of me what they need most.  Guilt-free parenting comes through guilt-free living.   The last thing they need is having to deal with my ego stuff.  When it gets in the way real needs never get met in good measure.  As I live as God’s person He becomes the focus, not me and my neurotic needs.  The basis of each and every dysfunctional family is ego.  No kids need this to struggle with.

Take for example the Fruit of the Spirit Paul writes about in Galatians 5:22-23.  Allow me to point out each aspect of it for us.  The first aspect is that of love – the Holy Spirit sheds abroad within our hearts the full and complete love of God — and His love gives us a divine love to draw on in loving our partners and His kids, plus all others, including ourselves.  The second aspect is that of His joy.  Our sense of joy gets muddled by how we define and understand happiness.  Joy goes way beyond happiness.  Happiness is conditioned by circumstances and conditions surrounding us.  Joy is much deeper and does not depend upon any other thing except our personal relationship to a loving Lord and Savior in whose care we can relax and trust.  The third is peace – the peace of Jesus Christ that He has with the Father – this is what He shares with us.  It is a peace that transcends human understanding.  Life may be dangling us over a precipice but our hearts are at rest in Him for we know who is holding us in His loving hands.

The fourth is patience.  The Spirit doesn’t bolster up our efforts of patience; He infuses us with His patience.  The Spirit is not hassled by life, nor is He harried by circumstances.  Relationships do not challenge Him.  He does all He needs to do in God’s timing and in God’s way.  This is what He is infusing into us as we learn to yield it all to Him.  Fifth is kindness.  There is nothing more kind than the grace of God toward us as sinners and stumbling saints in the making.  We may try the Spirit’s patience but we cannot exhaust it.  It is founded in His love.  Along with it comes the sixth aspect: gentleness.  Gentleness befits compassion.  Compassion does not know anything but gentleness toward another – any other.  Seventh is faithfulness.  Remember how love was defined earlier in this article?  Love is dependable.  It is never absent; it is always there to respond to the real need in the other.  Faithfulness is far more than just hanging in there.  It springs from a heart that knows how to love and love well.  It is there for the other through more than thick and thin.  There is never a question of quitting or turning away.

Aspect number eight: Self-control.  God never gets into a tug-o-war with a two-year old.  Nor does He act in some passive-aggressive manner as we might.  He acts and reacts appropriately in every situation and relationship.  Since He is love, He knows how to love and love is always blessed with self-control.  Not control of others; self-control.  Another way of defining this self-control is in terms of 1 Corinthians 13.  His gift to us is in giving us self-control to allow Him to be in control of us always and in all ways.

Now, how do I relate to my partner with the Fruit of the Spirit abiding in me?  How do I relate to His kids whom I am partnering with Him to raise as His own when the Spirit is in control of me?

Now we get the picture of how and why we are so dependent on the Spirit of God in both.

It Means Discovering and Living Out a Christian Worldview

It means discovering and living out a Christian worldview that will impact His world in His way to His glory.  The world my kids are growing up in is not the world I grew up in, and much of my thinking was shaped by that earlier world.  I have lots to learn if I am going to understand theirs and assist them to make their way through it to Him and to His glory and their joy.  What they need to know most is His worldview, not necessarily mine.  Mine needs to be captured by His. And to discover that worldview, we and the kids need to think things through, maybe even in new paradigms of understanding and relating.

Their world is so much larger than mine ever was at their ages.  I thought mine was so much larger than that of my parents, but that of my kids is light-years away from and ahead of mine.  We both need to catch up with God’s.  This means learning to walk by faith.

It means learning to do His will in His way.

How do we teach kids morality in a world so committed to immorality, paganism and me first. All this points up the tremendous need we all have for God in our lives, in our relating, and especially in our thinking.  We have to learn to think His thoughts after Him when it comes to partnering and familying.  Raising His kids in His world in this day and age cannot be left to our thinking and our visioning.  It has to be of Him.  We are in constant need of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, empowerment and leading.

One advantage of the present crisis in our country and world is that it is forcing us to rethink our values as a nation and world leader.  We have lost our way.  We had certainly lost God’s way long before.  As Christians we need to go back to Sunday School and learn again how to spell J-O-Y!

Jesus first, Others second, and You last.  Me-myself-and I doesn’t fit into a Christian ethic and certainly not in the Kingdom of God.  Living simply allows us more to give in serving the real needs of others.  The home we live in, the car we drive and how we drive it, all speak of our values, or lack thereof.  A secular education that promotes self cannot be a part of it.  The best education is in how to give ourselves away for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

He’s anxious for us to depend on Him for all we need and for how to instill it in His kids He has loaned to us.  More than anything else we want to be good learners and obedient followers of all He shared with us.  We want to be great marriage partners and wonderful surrogate parents to His kids.  That calls for us to be the best we can be for Him.  It may seem trite to some, but the reality of it is not.  The challenge is in the question, “What would Jesus do?”  Then our prayer becomes, “Lord, teach us to do it in Your strength alone.”

How This Looks in the Home

With all this in mind and heart, our homework looks like this: let’s pause and consider how it needs to be worked out on a daily basis.  Here are some questions to ask and seek answers for.

1. Age-appropriate lessons to be learned.  How do we teach these things to His kids in ways to assist them to grow as we do the same ourselves?
2. Age-appropriate stages to be maneuvered.  How do kids develop at their various life-stages and how do we prepare them and help negotiate them for Him?
3. Age-appropriate relating to achieve these goals.  What do they need most from us in learning how to achieve their full potential as God’s persons?
4. Birth to six.  The first 36 months of developing are the most crucial.  During their pre-social needs how can we help them the best?
5. Six to twelve.  Moving into puberty how do we assist them in achieving their potential to the glory of God and their own personal joy?
6. Teen years.  Teens are never “terrible teens” but they do go through good and terrible times.  How do we assist them to do it well and for the family to survive in wholeness?
7. Young Adulthood.  Most of life’s decision will be made at this point.  How do we assist  them to make good ones and to discover the joys of serving others in His Name?
8. Dependance on God.   Kids learn to become independent, then interdependent, as well as true dependency.  Where is God in all this for them?  How well have we learned these lessons ourselves?
9. Relationships.  A future chapter will be devoted to this topic, but for right now, how do we model for them and teach them the value of relationships?  Nothing in all of life is more precious to us than are relationships.
10. Marriage.  How interesting it is that the most important relationship of our lives except for our walk with God is entered with so little life-preparation.  How long did it take before the reality set in that says, wow!  I could have prepared better if only I had known!
11. Familying.  The natural tendency is to parent as we were parented.  But what from that past would serve me well now?  And parenting is a dual role: how does my past mesh with that of my partner?  We are building a new Family System our of that of two other systems.  What do we select; what do we jettison, what do we add, and why?
12. God’s Forever Family.  We are part of the Kingdom of God – God’s Forever Family.  Where do we find the examples we need to emulate?  Where do we find wholeness and functionality to guide us?
13. Wholeness.  What is a whole person?  What is a whole Christian?  What is a whole Christian marriage?  What is a whole Christian family?  Help!
14. Living Life God’s Way.  Who helps us interpret the Word so we can come to understand God’s original intention and how the Spirit wants us to live it out?   Of all the voices we hear out there, which is the Holy Spirit’s?
15. Resources.  Where do we go for real answers to real questions?  Pastor, help!

Each month we’ll add another chapter to this journey into being all He wants us to be.  Doing comes from being.  Our first emphasis has to be on being.  In seeking answers to the questions listed, talk with your Pastor.  Take a good look in the Church Library.  Go on line for Christian resources.  Set a goal of seeking all the answers you need for today and for tomorrow.  Allow the Holy Spirit to be your Guide and Enabler.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

HOW  WE  GROW  SPIRITUALLY

AS  CHRISTIANS  PARTNERS  AND  PARENTS

Take a moment to look back on the day you were married.  What memories pop into your mind?  No matter how many times you recall them, they are reminders of a life-changing event in your life.  Scan the years since then and reconsider all the changes marriage has brought you.  “…For richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness and in health….”  Those vows don’t cover all the transitions and commitments renewed along the way, but they did get us pointed in the right direction as you started off down the road of life in becoming one.

In all honesty, you know your marriage had impacted you in ways you never thought might happen.  The person you are today is because of your partner’s influence in your life.  The transition of two becoming as one is not only life-changing, but also life-enhancing.  Where would you be today if you had not become part of that union that has resulted from the two of you becoming one?

Now, take another moment and focus on that day when you became a parent.  Enter, more changes, more transitionings.  Planned for or not, here is another life emerging on the scene, and with it comes changes you could not really imagine until – there they were!   Wow!  Ready of not, it’s all systems full steam ahead.  You have brought a new life into the world.  Now what do you do?

There is nothing in all the world like marriage and familying.  And even though you have lots in common with millions of other marriages and families, yours is unique to you.  You want it to be unique, especially when you see what is happening in so many surrounding you, even those you know of within your own extended families.  And as Christian parents, you have to know that God has a direct role in all that is said and done.  That’s the goal you want to achieve.

In God’s original plan, marriage and familying are His creation.  Two becoming one is what He created.  He knew we are not built to go it alone.  Love needs to have an object into whom it can pour itself.  That person is one’s partner.  Remember the old song, “True Love”?  It goes like this: “I give to you and you give to me….”  We discover the basis of our true self in that loving and being loved.  The family – the home – is where this is expressed and experienced best and fullest.  So here we are, formed in His image and at the same time enjoying that image in our true love for one another.  This is true serendipity!

Whose We Are

What is foundational to both our marriage and familying is the personal and growing knowledge of Whose we are.  We are Christians, therefore we are Christian marriage partners and Christian parents, and it is our heart’s desire to have our marriages and families glorifying of Him.  This is because we are His.  Our calling is to follow Him, thus to partner with Him in both our marriage and family life.

Think with me what it means to be His.  Since we are His, and both our Lord and the Holy Spirit indwell us as Christian believers, this means we have a personal relationship with Him that shapes our lives: our thinking, our relating, our worldview, our mission and purpose in life, and how we feel about it all.  We live it out in Him as Lord.  We live it as He directs for He knows best our true needs.

This means our true identity as persons is not in who we are, in and of ourselves, rather it is in who He is and what we are becoming in Him.  And because our true meaning is in Him, it therefore has a spiritual base as well as a spiritual end.

In our culture we have been raised to see ourselves as human beings and in many instances mere human doings.  Of course we are human in that we live in human bodies within a natural world.  But that does not define us.  It merely locates us in the present time and space focus.  But we are far more than that.  We are spiritual beings and we are eternal.  The other part of us one day will die but not us.  We come from Him; we return to Him; we live forever in Him.  That’s who we are.

Look at it this way: We are spiritual beings, created in the image of The Spiritual Being – the Triune God – for a spiritual purpose to a spiritual end by a spiritual means for a spiritual mission to the glory of God and our spiritual fulfillment, meaning, and joy.  It looks something like this:

1.        Spiritual beings – living temporarily in physical bodies for here and now…

2.        Spiritual image – we come from Him, we live in Him, we are Home in Him…

3.        Spiritual purpose – to grow up into the full image of Jesus Christ…

4.        Spiritual realm – the Kingdom of God, His Kingdom of Love…

5.        Spiritual end – to glorify God and to make Him real within His own world…

6.        Spiritual means – the empowerment of the Spirit of God living within us…

7.        Spiritual service – the loving of others with His love in His Name…

8.        Spiritual fulfillment – the life God intends for all His own to be lived abundantly…

9.        Spiritual meaning – the fruits of this life are eternal in consequence and relationship…

10.       Spirit joy – the peace of God which goes beyond all human understanding…

In spite of our original state of having sinned against Him and fallen, He has redeemed us as spiritual beings and our personal sin that marred that image, it has now been fully restored in the Person of Jesus Christ so that through the grace of God as revealed in Jesus we have been reconciled to Him.  Now that we have been reconciled to Him and restored to His original plan of how life is to be lived, His Holy Spirit enables us to grow up into the image of Jesus Christ.  Our submission to His plan and His power enables this new life to develop as He leads.  We are now partners in extending and fulfilling the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and entering into His mission as His own.  This new life is the basis of our relating to God, others, our true selves, and to life as He intends it to be lived.  Herein lies our calling, our mission, our purpose, our life-meaning, our personal fulfillment and our joy.  Imagine a marriage and family based in two such individuals living as God intends.  Great partners; super parents.  That’s God’s plan.

This means that as a couple, our first responsibility is in being His, and entering into a spiritual process of maturing up into the image of Christ for others to the glory of God.  This is our spiritual direction.  We are to grow up into Him.  As we grow up into Him spiritually, we also grow up – mature – into fully alive human beings and guess where all that flows?  It flows into our marriages and our familying.  Through it we become the partners and parents God wants us to be.

Our growing up into Him together is what we need most to offer each other, and what our kids need from us is the same.  They are spiritual beings, made in the same image, and made for love just as are we.  This is their most important lesson to learn in life.  To be able to teach them we must first learn to experience this for ourselves.

Who We Are

I know there’s a lot of heavy stuff included above, but this is what we should have been able to grow up into if our parents and families and churches had raised us accordingly.  But, be that as it may, here we are now and this is the challenge the Spirit places before us.  If I am living this out in my marital relating, think what my partner will be receiving from me.  If my partner and I are living this out in our parenting, think what our kids will be receiving from us.  Since we are God’s persons, this means we are partnering with Him in raising His kids.  Take note of what you just read.  The reality of parenting is this:

He is not partnering with us in the raising of our kids; we are partnering with Him in the raising of His kids. They are on loan to us; they belong to Him as we do also.  We are His partner in all of our relationships, especially in our marriage and familying.

We are not our own.  We have been bought with a price, the life of His Son.  We belong to Him.  Once this is learned and we begin living it out, all of life suddenly begins to change.  Life from above begins to become life here and now as He intends it.  That’s what our kids need most from us.  This is what we need most to become and do.

Who are we?  We are God’s partners.  We bring to this all He is to us and all He needs to be to them through us.  All this begins with us being His and allowing Him to be in charge of us.  The examples of how this works are found in the Fruit of the Spirit (See Galatians 5:22-23), and in His love Example (1 Corinthians 13).  Not many of us grew up within such a home, nor have we seen it demonstrated much in our circles of acquaintances, but that does not take away from the reality of what needs to be in place.  This is what needs to be realized.  We’ve experienced far to much of that which is wrong.

Far too often we have taken the easy way out by parenting as we were parented and partnering in ways that demand little preparation and no real formal training.  We leave the most important earthly relationship in our lives to hormones, feelings, and whims.  We spend more time planning the wedding than we do the relationship that is to last “until death we do part.”  Somehow this needs to change, and if it is not a challenge accepted by the Forever Family of God, then who is going to provide it for a Christian couple?  Leaving it all up to them is a formula for disaster.  Reality tells us there are more divorces today within the church than outside.  How can this be?

Why?

No one knows us better than does God.  He is a God of love and He has revealed Himself to us as Love because He knows us, He knows our deepest needs, and He knows our need for His peace and joy.  The why of all this is: His will for our lives and our well-being.  Another part of the why is because our deepest need is not to be loved (that is already a reality in His love for us) but it is to be loving.  Our very nature – having been created in His own image – is to be loving.  God wants to love our partner and our family through us.  He wants us to love them with His love.  And another part of the why is love life-gifts our kids and our partner and they cannot be all they need to be without that love through us.  It is far more important for us to be loving than it is to be loved.  Somehow we’re turned that around.  We expect to be loved;  loving is another matter.  Some are so self-focused they see loving others as an option.  God commanded such love of others because that meets our true need.

Go back and take another look at 1 Corinthians 13 and allow God to speak to you about how you relate to others and why.  Families are made for loving and being loved.  Life is made for love and loving.  Anything God is in has these marks about it.

The number one reason for dysfunctional marriages and families is a lack of love and loving.  A lack of love means both spouse and child abuse.  Withholding love is the worst form of abuse possible.  It kills the very soul of the one needing that missing love.  We may not be willing to recognize it as the basis of all horror stores on the front page of our newspapers, but rest assured, it is there.  Abusers missed out on what was needed most when they needed it most.  Functional families are surrounded with love and in its glow learn how to be loving.

Virginia Satire once wrote: “96% of families in the US are dysfunctional.”  One bard replied, “Yes, and the other 4% are in therapy!”

Let me ask you, why it is so many Christian families are dysfunctional?  Why is it we are not leading the nation and world in the art of Christian familying?  Is not our Heavenly Father a God of love?  Then how do we show it?  Our marriages and families are dying for it.  Can’t we hear their cries?  Maybe it’s because we are unwilling to listen.  If we do listen, maybe it’ll force us to change our thinking.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

OUR LIFE’S PURPOSE:

Growing Up Into the Person of Jesus Christ
or
Living and Familying the Jesus Way

Introduction

When this series began, I wrote the following: “What’s so hard about forgiveness?  If you want to know the truth: Everything!  From beginning to end it can be the most difficult process ever undertaken by some, very difficult by others, and a real struggle for all the rest.  Forgiveness is foreign to our fallen human nature even though it is at the same time the absolute center and heart of Christian faith.   Look at the world around us that lives on revenge and getting even.  Here we are, thousands of years after the coming of Christ, and we still think we can solve life’s problems by anger and getting even instead of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Will we ever learn?”

Now here we are in Part 12, wrapping things up and assessing what all this means and how it needs to impact our daily walk through life.  If we have allowed God’s grace to take over and for His Spirit to be in control of all the circumstances in our lives, then it is indeed time to “Let Go and Move Beyond” what once bound us as the offended and the offender.  In Part 11 with the journey of Margaret, grace allowed her to let go and begin moving beyond.  That is what God wants to have happen to all His children.  But achieving that is a work of grace many never discover.  This does not mean God is unable to deliver us.  It means, for whatever reason, we have not chosen to participate in that deliverance.

Letting Go

If offenses did not impact us, then letting go might be a simple act.  But they do impact us.  And anything that impacts us has within it the power we assign to it.  It can be used of God to grow us up into Himself and to mature us in every way possible.  We can also give it the power to undo us and make our lives miserable with self-focused needs for revenge and getting even.  The offense cannot choose which it will be: that belongs to us alone.  It is our will that gets exercised and determine which it will be.  We may vacillate first this way, then the other, but our will is in control.  The ultimate decision is ours and we will determine how it all goes.  We can excuse a bad decision all we want and blame it on the offense, the offender, the enemy, or all the above.  But in the end, our will has made the choice.  Or, we can make the decision to turn it all over to His grace and find the God-given ability to let it all go.  In the end, then, grace has won over all of it, to the Father’s glory.

First, consider with me what “letting go” is not as well as claiming what it truly is to be.  It is not a surrendering of the will for any other reason such as “How would not forgiving make me look?”  Or, “What will people think of me if I continue to carry a grudge?”  Or even, “I just want out of all this as well as out of the relationship that has now been injured or even destroyed.  He can go his way and I’ll go mine and that will settle it.  I just want to get on with my life without so-and-so being a part of it.”   Letting go needs to be because the issue has been resolved at the highest possible level and now it is time to move on to new levels of relating.  If this is not the case, then any letting go is premature and possibly even immature.

Second, “letting go” is not giving up on what could be in its place.  It’s a believing in what needs to be in place and continuing to grow together in that God-chosen direction.”  It’s a dealing with the past to assure the present and to secure the promise of what God wants to see in place between us.  It is not staying in the past, aborting the present, and ignoring the God-chosen future.  If we cannot move ahead together, then we have failed to really deal with the past and present.  Since God is in it, there has to be more for us both, and together.

Third, we are both stuck in the present until we are able to let it go as a finished event no longer empowered to hinder either the present or the future.  We are going to take the power we had given it to add that power to His that will now enable us to achieve all He has for our future as well as for our individual selves.  By healing what is past we are healing our present and our future.  But the future cannot be all He wants it to be for either one of us until we have dealt with the past.

Fourth, letting go is accepting all He revealed to me about myself in my reaction to the offense and all He wants to share with me in building me up into Himself.  I need to move beyond the old self into the True Self that is now fully under His control.  Since the offense caused me to face certain things about myself this serves as God’s wake-up call to me to mature in Him.  Now that He has revealed this about myself, I can never go back to perceiving myself as I once did.  This is how He works all things for good.

Fifth, I am where I am today by the grace of God and not because of anything within myself, as humbling as that is to realize.  Forgiveness is present because He has enabled me to receive what He was willing to give me and to allow it to reconcile and restore what had been lost and broken.  It is all of Him.  I may have partnered with Him in it, but He gave me the ability to receive His partnering in it with me.  To God be the glory.  How great is His grace.

Sixth, letting go is accepting the mind of Christ to see all of it as He knows it to be, and choosing to see it through His eyes, not just my own.  My old self could never see it as He does, and until I learn to see it as He does, that old self is still in control.  I am giving that old self power that should belong to Him alone.  The Holy Spirit helps me yield up my will to Him.  In my hands there will be disaster upon disaster.  In His there will be wholeness and wellness and the freedom to grow up more and more into Him.

Seventh, letting go is to choose not to live in the past, to dwell on anything that separates me from Him, my True Self, the offender, and what He has in store for us together.  His forgiveness is revolutionary.  It is transforming within the offender and the offended.  It is superhuman and it is all a work of grace.  When we choose to live in Him and allow Him to live in us, forgiveness becomes a way of life – the Jesus Way.

Eighth, letting go is never keeping a score card of the wrongs of others (1 Corinthians 13).  But at the same time humbling it’s owning and acknowledging my own wrongs against Him, others, and myself.  Remember the story of the oyster dealing with a grain of troublesome quartz?  How far along does it take in the development of the pearl to where the oyster can no longer remember the grain of quartz that started the whole process of pearl-making in the first place?  With a focus on the present and what the ultimate goal is going to produce, the oyster has no thought of that grain of quartz any more.  It is now encased in layer upon layer of a priceless milky substance that brings only promise and joy.  A pearl is being formed.

Ninth, letting go is as easy as grace can make it or as tough as unforgiveness can make it.  The heart that longs for it to be gone is both willing and able to let God take it.  If you don’t believe God can take it and displace it with His own joy and peace, then you have never indulged in His grace and forgiveness.  It’s only hard to let go when we choose to make it hard.  Once we have found the faith and courage to place it in His loving hands, then He takes it to Himself, and replaces it with a special abundance of His grace and peace.  We end up speechless; it’s gone!

Tenth, letting go is allowing God to “bury it in the depths of the sea….”  As long as we allow it to hang around and haunt us, there can never be any real sense of peace.  He has forgiven it and as far as He is concerned, once forgiven, it is as if it had never happened.  By claiming His grace, it is gone for us as well.  If its memory should ever pop up again, our heart handles it by giving it to Him and allowing His grace and peace to reign within us.  Why bring it up ever again?  It is dead and buried in His grace.  Our focus now in solely on that grace.

The human hand is such an engineering marvel.  Look at all it can do.  But at the same time, it has its limits.  For example, it can hold sand from a beach but it cannot pick up the whole beach all at once.  Another limitation is, when it is full, nothing else can displace that sand unless the owner of the hand chooses to empty it of the sand then reach for diamonds instead.  The same is true of the mind and especially of the heart.  The sand is the offense; the diamond is the grace of God.  There is no room for the diamonds until the sand has gone.  Letting go is making room for the diamonds.  And since the diamonds are so precious, not a single grain of quartz need be  present.

Moving Beyond

Whose we are belongs to the reality of our being in Him and Him dwelling in us as our Lord.  Think of the difference this makes within our faith, our beliefs, and daily walk in Him.  We are His child.  He is our Heavenly Father.  We belong to Him because we are His in Jesus Christ.  We no longer belong to ourselves.  He bought us at the Cross.  From that moment on we are in Him and He is in us.  He owns my True Self, for He has paid for all my sin, has shared His forgiveness with me, and my eternity is now in Him.  Therefore, I owe Him my all, and out of that I must claim all He wants me to become in Him.  To realize that wholeness, I must learn to move beyond anything and everything that hinders that relationship to Him.

Who we are now that He has claimed us as His own means we are to continue growing up into His Son in every way, and that growth depends on allowing Him to take from us anything and everything that hinders that growth.  If I am seeking to bring along baggage from the past that hinders that relationship, how do I explain that to Him?  It is hindering the growth He intends for me, and I am deliberately blocking that growth.  I have to claim His grace and allow it to move me to where I cannot go on my own.

What life is all about in Him is love and grace and forgiveness, and how He expects it to be lived out in obedience to Himself.  This is life as He intends it to be lived.  It cannot be lived on my own; it can only happen as He is allowed to live out His life from within me.  This is why I must learn to forgive and to be forgiven.

Where we are going in our discipleship in His Name and why this journey is so important to us and to Him is because it means to live the Jesus Way.  There is no other definition of wholeness and wellness.  It is to allow His life to be lived out within our own.  Of course we can move beyond when He is allowed to be alive within us.  He is Christ the Victor, and He is present to share His victory with us.  To be faithful to Him we must move beyond all that hinders our relationship with Him.

What baggage we are carrying from the old way is an absolute affront to Him and to His grace at work in our lives.  If we insist on continuing to carry it, we do so in denial of His Cross and the redemption He died to secure for us.  We must learn to let Him be in control of it all.  His Cross is so our baggage can be forgiven and taken away.  Where He stands within us is evidenced by the stuff we allow to be present and the depth of His grace we are willing to affront.

Whether we want to face it or not, we cannot love and serve Him and yet carry such garbage around in our own souls.  And it is garbage.  It smells to high Heaven.  He knows it is present as well as we ourselves.  We do not bury it dead: we bury it alive, and it never stops festering until it has been dealt with by Him.  But He won’t force its removal.  He will not violate our wills.  We can carry it to the day He calls us Home.  But as long as it is present, we cannot be in a right relationship with Him, others, our True Selves, or with life as He intends it to be lived.  The price for such disobedience is more than we will be able to fathom this side of Heaven.

Life-lessons as God unfolds them for us tell us right up front that living the Jesus Way takes a Source greater than our own.  Forgiveness is a supernatural action.  We experience God in the process.  God is doing us a favor by letting us know how we are injuring ourselves and our relationship with Him when these matters are not turned over to Him and His grace.

Forgiving all offenses is needed for none of them can compare with what we have cost Him.  Our sin required the Cross of Christ for our forgiveness.  We need to keep this as our focus when shifting attention to the offense of another.  This is no easy matter.  That’s why we must rely on Him for the discernment, motivation, and leading in how to handle it to His glory and to our own joy.  A Chinese Fortune Cookie described it this way: “A person who studies revenge keeps their own wounds open.”  Our healing is intricately involved in our ability and willingness to forgive.  To forgive is to live the Jesus Way.

Once we have learned to walk the Jesus Way we will not be offending again and again for we realize the important and preciousness of relationships, first with Him, then with the offended and our True Selves.  We are not willing to let that go for some offense against us when the cost to us, to God, and to others, comes as expensive as having Him relive His Cross.  He died so we can have the power to forgive.  We cannot afford to say by our lack of forgiveness, “Thanks Jesus, but no thanks at the same time.”  “Nice gift, but I have other things in mind, like getting even, no matter the cost.”   Where’s the logic in that?  Is this not demonic?

Achieving our goal of becoming one in Him and becoming all He has called us to be is our top priority as a child of God.  Nothing is worth allowing that goal to be sabotaged.  Enough tears have been shed; enough pain has been felt; enough alienation has been allowed to cloud the sunlight of His Presence.  It’s time to be free: to love Him, to be reconciled, to be healed and made whole, and to again experience the full depths of His love, grace, and peace.

To God be the glory for we recognize it is all of Him.  Where would we be today without Him in our lives?

In Conclusion

If I knew then what I know now, how much pain and sorrow could have been spared.  The grace-lesson I have been privileged to learn brings me to see what is the most important thing in my life: my personal relationship with Him.  No offense can be empowered to take that from me.

The person I no longer am is the person He wants me to be; I thank God for the lesson learned and for the new me He is fashioning in His grace.  Thank You, God, for the new me that is emerging in all this.

The person I am becoming by the grace of God is more the person I truly want to become.  If only I had chosen to see this long ago.  But here I am now, and I am learning to trust Him and His grace for all of life.  I am allowing Him to be in control of my life.  For the very first time I am beginning to realize my true freedom is in being bound to Him, and to Him alone.

The journey that counts most is that of growing up into Him.  As I grow it shows in all my relating, especially to Him, but also to all others.  The offenders along the way are not my enemies unless I choose to make them such.  He gives me the strength to make that choice.  I have the power, given me by Him, to draw a circle in the sand that includes and does not exclude them.  This is how I know His grace is at work in me.  The same grace keeps me from offending others.  If an offense occurs, true repentance, contrition, confession and restoration are close behind.

I’m still growing and will to the day God calls me Home.  Like Paul, I’m not there yet.  Some days not even close to arriving.  But at least now I know what God has to share with me.  I live and share each and every day in Him knowing His best is yet to come…!

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

Introduction

If I were to list all the things God has forgiven me of, not only would it be a long volume with many parts, but you would soon tire of reading of sin number umpteen coming up over and over again.  You’d begin to wonder was I that slow of a learner, or why didn’t I learn and get my act together?  And you’d be right.  But at the end, wherever that might be, Jesus Christ would pen one simple sentence: “Father, put all this on My account.”  It would all be marked “Forgiven!”

You would think that with such a record, there would not be a single offense of a single person who had offended me that I would even think twice about forgiving them.  It should arise spontaneously.  After all, look what I have done to God, and all of it has been forgiven by Him.  But you and I both know this is not how human nature works.  It is only grace that can operate at such a high level.  And that is the level to which Jesus Christ calls each of us.  “To forgive those who sin against us just as He has forgiven us for sinning against Him.”  This is what the Lord’s Prayer is all about, is it not?

Forgiveness comes from within the heart of the offended.  No matter what the offense is or what it may cost us, how we respond to it tells much about us and what lies within us.  How we handle it tells what lies within.  It also tells about our personal relationship to Him and to our True Selves.  It reveals to us our own insides just as a truth mirror reveals the exterior.  We are acting out of our true relationship with Him.

An Example

Forgiveness stories amaze us, not just because of their rarity but also because of their depth.  For such an example, let me cite from Richard Stearns’ book, The Hole in Our Gospel, pages 159-160.

One human face of war, whom I will never forget, is that of a woman named Margaret, who was caught in the violence of Northern Uganda’s war against the rebel Lord’s Resistence Army.  One day Margaret, six months pregnant, was working in her garden with several other woman when rebels – a group of child soldiers led by an adult LRA commander – emerged from the bush…literally hacking Margaret’s friends to death with machetes while she watched.  But as they approached Margaret to do the same, the commander noticed that she was pregnant.  Believing it would bring bad luck to murder a pregnant woman, he instructed the soldiers to not kill her.  Instead, he gave the order to cut off her ears, nose, and lips and leave her to die; that way, he reasoned, her subsequent death would not be on their hands.  So they carried out the unthinkable and left Margaret maimed and bleeding to death.

But Margaret was found and rushed to a hospital for treatment.  Remarkably she survived, and three months later gave birth to a son, James. There is nothing in our frame of reference that allows us to understand such brutality.

What happened next can only be understood through the miracle of God’s love – as a demonstration of the incredible power of the Gospel to redeem even the darkest kinds of evil.  One day, months after her son’s birth, Margaret saw the commander who had given the order to maim her, arriving at the same rehabilitation center.  He had been captured and had also been sent for counseling and rehabilitation.  In great distress, she frantically told one of her counselors that she had to leave immediately, that she could not be near him, and that she wanted to kill him.  In response, the man was moved to a different center several kilometers away.  But Margaret’s anxiety remained.

After weeks had passed, the man confessed to his involvement in Margaret’s attack, even as she worked through her own fears and anger.  Finally, a meeting was arranged.  The man asked Margaret to forgive him.  And Margaret, reaching deeply into the source of all forgiveness – Jesus Christ – forgave.  Here again was the power of the Gospel to redeem and restore, and to meet evil and turn it back.

On the wall of the Children of War Center are photographs of that day – Margaret and this man who had mutilated her.  He is holding little James in his arms as she stands next to them – smiling without lips.

There is never an offense that does not bring with it loss.  When we suffer loss, it tests all that is within us.  But at the same time, we ourselves determine how that loss is to impact us.

With Margaret, the loss was indescribable and overwhelming.  No one needed to hold up a mirror for her to see the results of the mutilation.  It was reflected back to her in the eyes of everyone she met and encountered.  Her nose and ears were gone.  Her lips had been cut off.  In any culture the world over, this branded you as a freak.  Externally she was branded and ostracized.  But internally, she was alive with the grandeur of God’s grace and love.  Evil marred her but grace redeemed and beautified her.

A Work of Grace

At the heart of the Forgiveness Process lies the very heart of God.  Depending on the depth of the process of learning to reach forgiveness, one encounters and experiences God.  This is what Margaret found in working through to the point of forgiveness.  The human desire for revenge could have been her sole goal.  She could have given herself to it totally and eternally, but in grace chose to do otherwise.  What brought her from that sense of loss to what can be truly gained through it is all of God’s grace at work in our lives.  But with this comes the realization of what further losses she might sustain if she did not work at accepting His grace for her life.  This is the deeper lesson to be learned.   We all must learn this.  This can save us from offending ourselves.  If we cling to our human desires we lose God in the process.  If we lose God in the process then where are we?  Forgiveness is always an option, but look at the cost when we choose not to forgive.

Jesus taught us that His grace is all-sufficient for every need.  This means there is nothing that cannot be forgiven when we appropriate that grace and allow Him to do His work in us.  Our withholding of forgiveness does not mean He withholds His from the offender.  It means we lost out on the joy and peace of being in step with Him.  Since the love and grace of God are available to us in full measure, our refusal to forgive means we have frustrated that love and forgiveness within our own lives.  This is what Margaret came to understand.  The offense committed against her was bad enough, but she in turn could not offend God by refusing to allow Him to work in her life.  We need to learn the same lesson.

How could a woman who had so very little to begin with and yet lost so much in a vicious mutilation of her body come to the point of forgiving her offender?  There is but one Answer – God!  She allowed Him to be Lord of her hurts and pain and loss.  He shared with her His resurrection life.

Learning to Forgive

Forgiveness is not a natural instinct.  Revenge is a natural instinct.  That’s why in today’s world there are over forty nations in mortal combat with one another.  There is only one place where forgiveness is the coin of the realm: it is in the Kingdom of God.  But at the same time that Kingdom is not realized within all who claim to be part of God’s Kingdom.  The old can still be present with us, and strongly so.  We need to learn how to forgive and the Spirit of God is our Teacher and Guide.  In the final analysis, He is also our Enablement.  We do not achieve it apart from Him and His intervention in our lives.

For many of us learning to forgive means unlearning lessons learned earlier in our lives.  If you grew up in a family where offenses were confessed and forgiveness was shared, you were blessed, indeed.  But if you were brought up in a family in which kids were forced to apologize and forgiveness was not an option, plus you never saw your parents apologize and forgive one another, then you have lessons to unlearn and real ones to put in their place.  Saying “I’m sorry”

and “Please forgive me” are as important as “I love you” and, in essence, are all a part of loving and being loved.  This unlearning is a hard lesson to learn and may of us need to reparent ourselves so the little Child of the Past inside us learns the needed lessons for building and maintaining loving forms of relating.  Many of us were taught that such sharing of emotions are to be seen as weakness, when in reality they express true strength and caring.

First comes our realization that it is achievable only in Him.  Just like love is of God, so is forgiveness.  The offense hits us at the human level but grace takes us to the divine and superhuman level where true forgiveness can take place.  We need help – God’s help – if true forgiveness is to happen.  We know that to be true for we know ourselves and our internal struggles with it.  “God, I need You to work in my heart to make this happen as it needs to be and for it to be to Your glory.”  I don’t want to have to forgive it a dozen times a day because I cannot give it over to You.  I want it to be done with and for that to happen, it needs to be of You and not just me.  This confession now signals God to take over and to work His grace in me.

Second, it is a part of our personal discipleship.  I have a part to play in all this, and my role is in terms of my personal relationship with Him as His own.  If I am to learn how to forgive I have to put myself in the place where He can do His work in me as well as in the offender.  If I were in the right place to begin with, He would have been in His rightful place to walk me through the Forgiveness Process.  Now I want to acknowledge this and seek for Him to be in that special place in my walk with Him.  I cannot afford to be broadsided ever again.  My daily walk needs to be as He intends it to be so that each and every step I take is in Him and in Him alone.

Third, it is a process of growing up into Him that brings us to its realization.  This experience tells me how much I need to be growing up into Him on a daily basis, not just when some circumstance points this need out to me.  I saw the offense as I did and reacted to it as I did because of my personal walk with Him.  Then when it came to needing to forgive, I found that that walk was not all I needed it to be.  If it is not all I needed it to be, then, obviously, it was not what He desired for me either.  Am I to await each time of need before I get serious about growing up into Him?  Or, am I to grow daily and when circumstances demand an extra level of His grace, I am already trusting Him for it?

Fourth, we are being encountered by Him in the experiencing of it.  God is in it.  I should be in a place of recognizing and understanding His presence within it.  Is my prayer one of, “God, be with me” as if He were absent and I am having to summon Him?  Or, is it “God be with me” as You have promised to be and I am acknowledging Your presence in this, whether I feel that presence or not?  If He is with me in all of life, then He is certainly present now.  By my surrendering to Him and His Spirit, I know I am experiencing Him within this need.  “Lord, what is it I need to learn about You while going through this needy time?”  Give me the discernment to see You at work in all of it..

Fifth, we owe Him our all as a result of this process.  If forgiveness is of God, then God is at work in our lives in our learning how to forgive.  The penalty of our offenses against Him is spiritual death but Christ intervened and died that death on our behalf.  He took the full penalty into Himself so we would not have to die it.  Now we are His and that is because He has forgiven and redeemed us.  This means we are no longer our own; we are His.  He did this so we could be rescued from spiritual death and become spiritually alive in Him.  So we owe Him our all.  This means in following His example forgiveness is never an option.  We owe it to Him to follow His example.  We owe it to Him to be forgiving.

Sixth, as He makes all things new we are forever changed.  The person we were when the offense was experienced is not the person we are now that the Forgiveness Process has worked in grace.  We are not sure where we might be at this time if it had not occurred; however, we are certain where we might have ended up if we had not allowed God to intervene.  His intervention is so complete for He alone understands our true need of Him.  We know He has changed us because He has made us forgiving.

Seventh, we can never fall back into what He has delivered us from.  The deep sense of joy and the resultant growth in our walk with Him leaves us in a place that is far removed from anything we had ever experienced in Him before.  We have grow up into Him that much more.  There will be no going back to any earlier level.  Going back will never do.  Not with what we have experienced of Him in this encounter.  To go back would be to betray Him and His working within us.  The lessons learned will serve us for a life time.  No debt we forgive can ever equal the debt we owe to Him.

In Conclusion

This is what it means to grow up into Him.  To become like Him is to walk the Jesus Way, and the Jesus Way is a life of forgiveness.  It is a to be empowered by Him to be able to pray as He did, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  This is a prayer Jesus learned to pray every day of His earthly journey.  This is why it is included in the Lord’s Prayer He taught us as His disciples.

This is what Christlikeness is all about.  To allow Jesus Christ to take over within our lives and to live His life out from within us.  To forgive as He does and would.  To relate to the offender as He related and relates to His own.  He has died to forgive the sins of the entire human race, and it is efficacious for all who name His Name.  If He loves and died for the world to forgive all sin, then we must forgive what enters our little world as well.

This is the Kingdom Life into which we have been reborn.  When we, as His followers, live out Kingdom Life, then the Kingdom of God is truly present from within us.  Look, here it is.  See it in action.  This is Kingdom Living at its best.  Living out that Kingdom Life is our deeper joy and peace.

Now Christ is alive within us.  There is no other way of explaining it.  It is not of us.  It is not of human nature.  It is all of Him and we are blessed to participate within it.  He is so alive in us that His will is being done.  Every morning as we begin a new day, we see Him in our mirror.

To God be the glory.  It is all to His glory.  If it were not for Him and His grace working within and though us, we know what human nature would be like.  Forgiveness would not be on the horizon.  How easily we might self-destruct.  But, because of Him, we are learning to experience His forgiveness as we walk the Jesus Way.  That is the forgiveness we share with all others.

It is one thing to pray the Lord’s Prayer regarding forgiveness.  It is another things to live it!  But to live it, is to know God.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:  Part 12:

LETTING GO AND MOVING BEYOND

Introduction

True forgiveness is a life-changing, redemptive, relationship change that takes those involved to a new and higher level of relating and in many cases brings them into the experiencing of God’s grace in ways never before experienced individually and collectively.  It has God all though it and as a result what is experienced enjoys His peace and a new level of understanding what His grace is all about.  It blesses all who are connected with it or share in the story of its rebirthing.

With that in mind, it becomes obvious that not a lot of true forgiveness takes place.  We might choose to label it as forgiveness, but it falls far short of what is listed above.  If what is taking place does not result in restoration and new life shared by offender and offended, then it becomes obvious the Holy Spirit is not in charge of the process.  The true meaning of forgiveness is the expiation (complete removal) of the offense so the relationship can grow and move ahead.  This does not mean all memory of the offense has been removed but it does mean the offense is not allowed to control the relationship as it once did.  The presence of God’s peace within the process tells us the Spirit is in control.

To help us understand true forgiveness and the process involved, let’s look at a more detailed defining of it.

A Definition to Consider

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a spiritual, psychological, relational,

social, moral, ethical and philosophical transaction

between two or more equal persons,

realizing their dependence on God,

in which the offended releases the offender

from any and all debt incurred by the offense,

by pardoning the offender.

The offended agrees to make any and all reparations possible,

to not commit another offense,

and to acknowledge what was done was wrong

and should not have been done.

With the offense now removed

the parties involved may reconcile

and renew their level of relating,

as if the offense had never taken place.

In working through the offense

both also work on the feeling levels involved.

The offender accepts the perceptions

of the offended as valid

and works with the offended from within

the offended’s perceptions of the offense.

All of this is done to the glory of God

and in obedience to the example of Jesus Christ.

If, at any point, the efforts are not as fruitful as needed,

the resources of the local fellowship

are available to all parties.

Because forgiveness is a process and not a single act,

it should be entered into and completed under

the leading and empowerment

of the Spirit of God.

Within that leading is the assurance the end result

for the parties will be stronger

and more meaningful levels

of interpersonal and intrapsychic relating.

Each experiences God in the process

of forgiving and being forgiven.

Key Elements to be Considered

1. It is a transaction between two or more equal persons.  If the two principles have not come to regard each other as equals – equal in worth to God and others – then the playing field between them is not level.  This puts it into a win-lose situation instead of a grace position: win-win.  The offended may be granting a favor to the offender, but in a grace relationship, they meet as equals within that grace.  God is granting a favor to both by perceiving and relating to them both as equals.
2. The offended releases the offender from any and all debt incurred.  The offer is extended not in part but in whole.  Forgiveness does not get parceled out: it is a gift of the whole.  If it is not in whole, then it is not true forgiveness.  Without it being in whole, the offense is still present and very much alive within the offended.  Once God forgives, the debt is canceled and the offense is buried in the depths of the sea.  And, as Corrie ten Boom points out, God puts up a sign that reads, “No Fishing!”
3. The offended pardons the offender.  A pardon released the debtor and ends the matter between them.  If the offended cannot grant an unconditional pardon, then there is no true forgiveness in it.  Just like God does not remind us of what in us caused the death of His Son, so we are to learn from His example and in pardoning, become done with it.  In pardoning the offender the offense is turned over to God.  His Son died for it; it now belongs to Him.  We have relinquished all claims to it forever.
4. The offender perceives the offense as does the offended.  In sharing the meaning of the offense to the offended, the offender comes to see it and feel it through the experience of the offended.  Here is where the full impact of the offense is recognized.  This is what the offended is pardoning.  By owning it, the offender sees the full extent of the breach in the relationship and also feels the full pain involved.  This brings them together is a way that is vital to all that is to follow between them as well as in them both.
5. They can now relate to each other as if the offense had not occurred.  We learn this from God’s example.  In His grace He justifies us; just as if the offense had never occurred.  When we learn to do this in dealing with the offenses we receive or create, as 1 John points out, we “experience God” in the process.  If this is how God deals with us and our offenses against Him, then this is how we are to deal with all offenses done against us.
6. Both work on the feeling levels involved.  One of the weakest points of how we work the Forgiveness Process is to seek to keep it at an intellectual plain and not deal with the emotional.  But the most crucial part of the process is the emotional.  That’s where we all live and that’s what we relate out of.  We have to deal with the feelings involved for true forgiveness to take shape and become reality.  Without understanding the feeling levels involved, the Process remains shaky and leaves the door open for all sorts of unfinished business between us.
7. All this is done to the glory of God.  Of course we do it for ourselves, and for the other person involved, but in reality what takes shape between us is in reality between us and Him.  He is the Foundation of all forgiveness.  He is the first to forgive and it is in Him that we find the grace to forgive.  True forgiveness means He is in it and what is being done is in reality to His glory and not to ours.  I thank you for forgiving me; you thank me for forgiving you.  But He is our Example, our Enabler, and He gave us the grace to confess and to forgive.
8. They seek outside help when needed in working the process.  At best, we are all novices in the whole business of true forgiveness, for it is a supernatural act, and at heart there is a lot of naturalness still in us.  Especially when we are hurting and want to hurt back.  To  create level ground between us and to discern all we need to know, sometimes we are too stuck in our own stuff to see the forest for the trees.  Nudges others give us can be Spirit-directed.  We are not beyond the need for spiritual and compassionate intervention.  Pain-clouded eyes see what they want to see and a hurting heart feels what it deems appropriate.  Help and insight is needed.  The Spirit has helpers who can assist us.
9. Both invest whatever amount of time is necessary for its completion.  Hurting can induce impatience, but the Forgiveness Process cannot be rushed.  At the same time there is also the temptation to short-cut it just to get it over with.  But what needs to be happening within the offended and the offender demands an investment of time, energy, prayer, listening, sharing, and soul-searching waiting on the Lord that need not be rushed.  True forgiveness is working on a lasting relationship with eternal values in view.
10. Each experiences God in the process.  If I am not thoroughly conscious of God’s role in this process, then my heart still has a lot of stuff to deal with.  The more we are immersed within His grace, the more we realize His Presence in all that is taking shape.  He is doing a work in us that has to be all of Him.  It is lifting us to heights we have never experienced before.  How must we experience of Him in the Process depends on our personal openness to His leading and Presence in it.  He can only reveal Himself to the yielding heart.

An Example of True Forgiveness

Let me share with you an example of True Forgiveness in the life-experience of Joseph as found in Genesis 35 to 50.  Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, had twelve sons, the youngest at this time in the story was named Joseph.  Because he was born to Jacob in his old age and was one of the sons of his favorite wife, Rachael, he spoiled him rotten.  Not only that, Joseph was a dreamer – a visionary – and as a result he lorded it over his older brothers.  Needless to say, there was a growing rift between them.

One day while the older sons were out with the father’s flocks, Joseph showed up wearing his prized coat of many colors the father had made for him.  They assumed he was sent to spy on them and report back to their father what they were or were not doing.  Knowing he had traveled alone, they conspired to do him in and tell their father a wild beast had killed him.  But the older brother, Reuben, begged them to spare Joseph’s life, so they stopped a passing caravan and sold Joseph into slavery.  He would end up with a hard life, would never see his family again, but at least they had not murdered him.  They took his coat, torn and bloody, back home and told their father his favorite son was now dead.

Joseph was sold to an Egyptian captain of the guard and over time, while in prison on false charges, was promoted by the King of Egypt to a high position because God used him to interpret the King’s troubling dreams.  Joseph warned the King of years of famine that were coming and as a result large stores of food were set aside for those years.  As a result the Egyptians and some neighboring countries survived because of Joseph’s wisdom and discernment.

One day ten of Jacob’s sons showed up in Egypt wanting to buy grain to save their families from starving.  Joseph now had the perfect opportunity for revenge.  He could destroy them all with a single command.  But Joseph knew God had planned for this moment and he could rescue his family and be restored to his father and kin.  He chose rather to forgive them, to welcome them and their families into Egypt, and to save all that was dear to him that he thought because he had lost through his brothers’ horrible treachery against him.  God was in all that had happened.  God had honored Joseph in order to save his father and brothers and families.

He saw that they were all brought to Egypt, that they had the choice land since they were shepherds, and they lived in peace and plenty all the rest of the days of their lives.  He also fulfilled his promise to his father, Jacob, by seeing to it his remains were buried back in the land of Canaan.  Joseph is an example of True Forgiveness.  He forgave.  Reconciliation and restoration took place.  They lived together in God’s harmony as if nothing had even happened.  His brothers could not believe his forgiveness was real.  They learned otherwise.  God was in it, all the way.

True forgiveness has God’s mark all over it.  God’s mark of forgiveness is a Cross.  To Him all the pain was worth it.  Look at the results.

Following Jesus’ Example

During Lent when we focus on Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion, and we recall His words from the Cross, what stands out most to us is when He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  This is one time when we hear Him speak those words, but what we need to understand is Jesus lived forgiveness all the time.  His actions tell us this.  This is living the Jesus Way.

This was the way of life for Jesus when Judas betrayed Him.  He lived this each time Peter denied Him.  He did this when the Jewish leaders rejected Him and bore false witness against Him.  He did this when Pilate mishandled His case and chose rather to be “politically correct.”  He prayed this when the soldiers flogged Him and one put a crown of thorns on His head.  He prayer this as they pounded the nails into His hands and feet.  He also prayed it when the people passing by cursed Him and spat at Him.  He prays this a thousand times a day as He intercedes for you and me whenever we sin against Him.  He may have spoken it while hanging there on that cruel Cross, but that was not the first time Heaven heard it from His lips.  He is God’s forgiveness.  He lived and lives the forgiveness way.  He offers that forgiveness for all sin and for all humankind.  And He encouraged us to “Go and do likewise, in His Name.”  And do it “seventy-times-seven” – whenever it is needed.

We focus on the offense: Jesus focuses on the relationship.  His plan is for reconciliation, restoration and growth to result.  His plan is for the forgiven to learn how to forgive.  To Him forgiveness is never an option: it is a must.  Love allows for nothing less.

In Conclusion

How does it feel to be forgiven?  You go around carrying that heavy load that bogs you down at every turn in life’s road.  You wonder if you will ever feel clean again, ever have a sense of being able to walk free and far.  You long to hear that word that will make all things seem new and clean and a sense of harmony restored when all has been so fractured for so long.  Then it happens.  That person you have offended and that event that has weighed you down and made you feel so defeated and useless is now forgiven.  They come to you and share the magic, transforming word.  “I forgive you!”  As it slowly sinks in, you realize a rebirth is happing inside you.  You are pardoned.  The account is paid in full.  You are free of the load and all its implications.  And you want to shout for joy.

How does it feel to forgive?  The inner hurt you have fought to hide still sticks in your throat and threatens to come spewing out all over everything.  But now you have carried it much too long.  It is time to let it go.  To forgive the other is to fee one’s self.  To take the load from the other is to let go of your own.  It is time to become free.  It is time to forgive.  It is time to gift the other with the gift of life and love.  The whole meaning of grace is restoration and reconciliation and peace.  Look in the other’s eyes and tell them, “I forgive you.”  “I want our relationship restored.

I want us back in harmony once more.  I want us to both be free to live and love again.

How does it feel when forgiveness is denied you?  No matter how deeply you regret what was done and the implications of the offense, all your hope had been placed in hearing the other say, “I forgive you.  Let’s build together from here.”  But your confession has been rejected; your hopes have been dashed.  The offended is now offending you.  You have only yourself to blame for the original offense and now you have to live with another one, this time against you.  It feels horrible.  You feels hopeless and helpless.  What more can you do but to ask again and again.  No one owes you forgiveness, but you will never stop longing for it.

How does it feel when you have chosen not to forgive?  No matter how the other person begs and pleads, you know you are not going to give in.  Your refusal is cutting you off from others but that is the price all have to pay.  You are not ready and maybe you will never be ready.  The other should have thought of that when the offense was incurred.  God says I have to forgive.  Not even God can force me to do it.  What was done to me closed that door forever.  I’m sorry others are choosing to label me and put it all on me, but he/she is getting what they deserve.  I don’t forgive; I get even.

How does it feel to know God will forgive you as you have forgiven others?  I just know God will see my side of things and His love will still forgive me even though He knows I won’t bring myself to forgive the one who offended me.  Jesus talked about someone committing the unpardonable sin.  As far as I am concerned, the offense committed against me is one of those.  I still believe I am in a right relationship with God as well as with myself.  When it comes to others, that’s up to them.  That’s their choice.  I have made mine.

How little we know of True Forgiveness.  How easily we settle for what makes sense to us and fits into our scheme of thinking.  But Matthew’s Gospel brings us to the reality of how God sees things and he sums it up for us in Chapter 18.  Only the forgiving are forgiven.  Our forgiving of others signals how He is to deal with us.  He does as we indicate it is to be done to us.  So here’s the reality we must reckon with: to withhold forgiveness from another is to violate our relationship with Him, others, self, and life as He intends it to be lived.  That’s reality.  That’s what we are to answer to before Him.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

Part 11

THE FORGIVEN LEARNING TO FORGIVE

Introduction

There are time when forgiveness cannot and should not be offered to an offender for to do so would undermine the focused relationship God intends to be present between you even though it is presently fractured by the offense that has been committed.  When the offender is unwilling to enter into the Forgiveness Process in good faith, or is not concerned about the outcome and its impact on the offended, to say “I forgive you in spite of your lack of repentance,” does nothing for the relationship and especially for the offender in owning up to the offense.  You can work it out between you and the Lord, who knows your willingness to forgive, but to offer it when unaccepted by the offender is to cast “your pearls before swine,” as Jesus expressed it.  It is not yet time to offer that person your gracious gift.  You are taking away from the offender the accountability that is part of that person’s healing and potential wholeness.  Keep the door open between you.  Never close the door.  But wait for the contrition and confession to form and find expression.  You’re not holding that person’s feet to the fire; you are hoping they will allow God’s grace to work in their lives.  He is the One they are fighting.  Allow the Holy Spirit time in which to bring them under His influence and guidance.

Another time in which to hold back and seek the Spirit’s leading is when the contrition is not real and the confession is on their terms when they are unable or unwilling to take into account the full meaning of the offense.  A true confession recognizes the offense as well as its impact, and then is willing to own the whole thing and thus meet you on equal footing before the Cross.  Saying “I did something wrong or even stupid” is not like saying “I betrayed you and I hear what this has meant to you and I am deeply sorry for all it cost you.”  For the two of you to be reconciled and restored, truth has to be present and honored as such.

Art was confronted by his daughter about the many times he had molested her when she was a child and even up into her teen years.  Art’s wife took his side against their daughter because she could not imaging how she would survive without Art as her provider and protector.  So the daughter was being revictimized by the mother and the repeated denials of her father.  All he was willing to admit to was he had “not been the best father in the world” but he had never done what she accused him of doing.  After two failed marriages and several attempts on her life the daughter finally got into therapy and was able to share with her therapist what had happened to her in the family home. All attempts to encourage family therapy were rejected by the parents.   You cannot forgive a victimizer who refuses to own his offense.  So what do you do?  You have no real relationship with your parents as a result of this, but at the same time you need them in your life.  The daughter left the door open to her parents but entering meant the accepting of what really happened.  She now had to reparent herself so she could live life as God intends, but mom and dad couldn’t be a part of it until they were willing to own their offenses.  Full confession comes first, then forgiveness.  The daughter was waiting for that confession.

When you are truly open to forgiving and for the relationship to be reconciled and restored, the offender must be willing to meet you and work with you for that to be realized.  Some hindrances can last a life-time.  Some will be delayed, even for years.  But when grace is allowed to work in the hearts of all concerned, it moves in a prescribed fulfillment of God’s original intention for us all.  And during the process we are accompanied by His peace.

Offenses arise in most every relationship from time to time, but when it comes to reconciliation and restoration, there are no shortcuts.  The Forgiveness Process must be followed for the sake of wholeness and harmony.  To forgive prematurely may appear an easy shortcut, but that can breed a level of contempt that makes another offense easier to commit.  Remember Peter’s question, “Should I forgive my brother seven times in a day?”  The answer is, “Of course!” but what is so wrong about the relationship that forgiveness of the brother is needed seven times within a single day?  If it’s needed on a daily basis, then what is wrong within this relationship that needs our full attention?

Forgiveness is an absolute necessity and we cannot be whole without it.  It is in reality the key to our wholeness and harmony.  But God places conditions on forgiveness.  The basic condition is on the heart of the offender, and God, who knows the human heart, knows when to forgive and when not to.  We need the mind of Christ in this matter.  There is no forgiveness when confession is not present.  There is no forgiveness when we are not contrite, when we intend to offend again and again, and when we just want to get off the hook for something that bothers another but not us.

To say to another, “I forgive you,” means the past has been dealt with and now we are ready to move into all God has for us in rebuilding what was fractured and put at risk.  With the offense removed, you are no longer the offender and I am no longer the offended.  You are my brother or sister in Christ and we are one in Him.  Now we need to allow the Spirit to build in us what God desires for us.  This means that all hindrances to the process have been faced and dealt with.  If they have not been dealt with, then the Process has not worked.  We need to back up and refocus before seeking to move ahead.

Hindrances to Forgiveness

One major flaw placed in the Forgiveness Process is when the offended is unwilling to deal with the offense, the offender, and what God wants to see in place.  I was teaching a class on Forgiveness to a group of senior citizens and in talking about hindrances to the process the question was brought up, “What if you don’t want to forgive?”  The simple answer to that is, then it will not take place.  But the deeper question is, “Why would one not want to forgive?”  The person may respond with, “You don’t know what it was he did to me.”  Another might be, “Because I’m not ready yet to let her off the hook.”  Still another could be, “Because I am still hurting so much I cannot even think about it at this point in time.”  There can be a vast gap between “Am I willing to forgive?” and “Am I able to forgive?”  Of course we are able if we are willing, but the will is the major player in our hindrance.

The man raising the question in this discussion of forgiveness has a son who has disappointed him deeply.  He chose a wife that has been a thorn in the side of his parents, and he had warned his son about her but they had married anyway.  Now the father wants his son to admit his father was right about her, and he should never have married her.  The son does not see it this way and feels the daughter-in-law’s problem is over his bossy and possessive parents so he isn’t about to confess what the father wants to hear.  But, even if he did, the father still would not forgive because he’s still upset over having to deal with the daughter-in-law.   The father’s real problem is himself, and the son can’t change that.

How we view the offense and how we view the offender are major elements in hindering the Process.  We are being forced to deal with our perceptions of how we expect to be treated, how we want to be treated, and what we demand of another.  ‘How dare he do this to me?”  “Who does he think he is, treating me like this, then wanting to waltz right back into the relationship as if nothing had happened!”  This “‘I’m OK and He’s Not OK’ position puts him one down to me and I’m not about to let him up, yet.”  When I am standing with God in all this is not the question.  It’s a matter of where that person stands with me, and I’m not about to accept him back at this point.

When alienation is present we do an inventory at the human level regarding the following:

• Who did the offending?
• What does that relationship mean to me?
• What was the offense and what has it meant to me?
• What weight am I assigning to the offense?
• What do I want to have happen to the offender?
  • How long is he to remain in “jail”?
    • How is he to suffer for what was done?
    • What is to be the payback?
      • How he needs to earn my forgiveness, if ever?
      • What do I want to have come out of this process?
        • I may be willing to forgive but will I ever be able to forget?
  • Doesn’t this make me one up on him?
    • Doesn’t he need to be reminded of how gracious I am being?
    • Isn’t it all his fault if I sense I need to keep my guard up?

But how do we see it at the supernatural level?

We are so bound up in what we think and feel, we see this as all about us and where is God in all this?  Hindrances to forgiveness are all of human origin.

Every Sunday afternoon, Dale would call his older brother who lived two time-zones away and had been bedridden for the past few years.  He knew what the conversation would be like for his brother was very judgmental, never wrong, and anything but forgiving.  But he was Dale’s brother, and there was always the hope that as his brother neared the end of his life, he might just mellow a little.  There were things they needed to talk out from previous years of alienation but even though Dale’s brother considered him hell-bound because he attended another kind of church than his, Dale still kept on calling.  It’s easier to open a door that is ajar than one that is slammed shut and locked.

Dale had chosen to forgive his brother for the alienation and knew that as soon as his brother reached Heaven, he would be fully aware of how unchristian and unforgiving he had been.  But that was his choice.  Dale had chosen otherwise.  But the sad part was they were the only two surviving from their immediate family and how it could have been if two hearts could have met.

You can’t force anyone to accept the Forgiveness Process.  Not even God forces that.  That’s not how love operates.  But love always keeps the door open on what might be.

The Major Hindrance

As painful as it might be to get honest about it, the major hindrance in the Forgiveness Process is not the offense or the other person involved – the offender – rather it is based in what is inside us, or the lack thereof.  The lack of forgiving holds up a mirror to us in which we see and learn a great deal about ourselves and our perception of life as God intended it to be lived.  It is a humbling reality-test that shows me my own heart above all else.

The key to learning to forgive is self-love; we forgive out of what is inside us. The key to unforgiveness is also the key to our own private dungeon by which we lock in our own true selves seeking to hide our lack of self-love.  God’s love, reinforced by self-love,  demands we forgive.  Self-love knows it is forgiven and demands we extend that to another.  To want to withhold forgiveness comes out of our own lack of forgiveness, being forgiven, being whole.  The other holds up a mirror to us and we don’t like what we see so we put it on the mirror.

What’s inside me determines my perception of the offense and of the offender.  The Forgiveness Process forces me to see inside myself first and foremost.  To hold a grudge and withhold  forgiveness is to enslave myself within my own self-imposed dungeon.  That dungeon is all of my own making and choosing.  It is locked from the inside and I have the key.

To release the other is to release myself.  To condemn the other is to condemn myself.  To be free the debt must be canceled in full.  It is paid in full through forgiveness and letting go.

My action signals God how to act toward me.  As we pray in the Lords’s prayer, “Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  It is the forgiven that are willing to forgive; when we forgive we let God know we are ready to be forgiven.  The forgiven cannot not forgive.  That is the nature of God’s love and forgiveness shared with us and with them.

Dealing with Hindrances

My natural nature will not forgive; it is committed to seeking revenge and getting even.  My divine nature because of our new birth into Jesus Christ, cannot not forgive.  To claim God’s  forgiveness for myself while at the same time withholding forgiveness and manifesting an unforgiving spirit toward another means I am lying to myself about my relationship to God.  God sees it the same way and deals with me accordingly.  To forgive is to be forgiven; to withhold forgiveness is to be unforgiven.  This is how the Kingdom of God operates.  I have been forgiven: that’s why I am forgiving.

Jan went through a major back surgery that required some six hours in surgery and a long time of recovery and physical therapy.  She was hospitalized for three weeks.  During that time life held up a mirror to her and she was forced to deal with a very painful past.  When she was in her early 30s, her husband had walked out on her, leaving her as a single mother with three kids to raise.  There was no child support or alimony and he abandoned his rights to the children.  He just took off, moving out of state, leaving her to handle everything on her own.  In her own words, “I was as bitter as sin and wanting nothing but a chance to get even with him.”  This left her alone, embittered, lonely, and desperate.  In time she did remarry, but it didn’t work out for she was still carrying such a heavy load from her past alienated relationship.

The surgery was almost her undoing.  It resurfaced the full extent of her bitterness and loss.  It hindered her recovery because of her refusal to forgive and let it go.  It has also tainted her relationship with her own kids.  They were reminders to her of their father.  She vowed to herself, to her dying day, she would never forgive him or let him off the hook!  Yet she was the one living in an inner dungeon of resentment and revenge.  It prevented her wholeness.  She was the one dying, not her Ex.  She was drinking the poison hoping for him to die.  Would forgiving him let him off her hook?  Maybe?  Maybe not?  Would forgiving him let her off the hook?  Yes!  The key to that dungeon is the key to her becoming whole and living within God’s peace.

Don had beat himself up for years because of something he did when he was five years old.  He and his friend were playing in his Dad’s garage when Don’s friend found a Coke bottle with a cork for a lid.  In it was a clear liquid.  The boys debated what to do and finally Don suggested his friend take a swig then pass it to him so he could try it also.  The bottle contained battery acid.  When his friend took a swig, he immediately cried out as the acid burned its way down his throat and into his stomach.  The boy fell to the floor, writhing in pain, gasping for breath, and soon convulsing.  Don ran for help, but by the time help came, it was too late.  Every day of Don’s life he saw his friend writhing in pain on the floor and convulsing in agony.  “It was all my fault.  I made him drink it.”  No voices to the contrary were able to relieve Don of his self-imposed sense of guilt.

He carried it with him through the Vietnam War and he covered his pain and loss with drugs and alcohol.  His friend’s family absolved him of his false sense of guilt over their son’s death, but Don never allowed anyone, God included, to absolve him of his self-imposed sense of guilt.  He died in his late twenties in a tragic car accident on a mountain road when he and the driver were pinned in the wreck and burned to death.  The hell he felt he deserved and one day would have to face came far sooner than he imagined.  His mother knew his fears of dying that way.  He made it through the hell of Viet Nam only to discover his real demons were inside him.  Don could forgive family members and friends for offenses but could never forgive himself.  He could never believe God would forgive anyone for having killed a five-year old friend.

Whenever we hear of a forgiveness story we marvel for it is obvious it is not natural, it is supernatural.  We live in a world bent on revenge and getting even.  Look at how our world struggles with its desires for revenge and getting even.  Forgiveness is truly an indication of the presence of the Kingdom of God.  There is no other way to explain it.  To the forgiven, they know that except for the grace of God, they would be consumed by regret and revenge as well.

In Conclusion

In our culture of rugged individualism the focus and emphasis throughout is on “me”.  If I am at odds with so-and-so, that is our business.  Wrong!  It is the business of the Lord of life, the local community, and especially the Christian fellowship in which we have membership.  Jesus tells us, “If a brother offends you,” go to that one and seek to work it out.  If you are unable to accomplish that between the two of you, then invite others within the Body to assist the two of you.  If that fails, then take it to the Church’s leadership and to the people and have them give you the guidance you both need.  If that doesn’t resolve it, then the Church leaders are to assess the one hindering the process and treat that one as the problem.  Our relationships either hinder or strengthen the fellowship.  We are accountable to the fellowship.

Look into the mirror that exposes your very own heart to you.  Nothing can hinder us from forgiving when we have the heart for it.  But at the same time, forgiving an offender may take everything we can muster and a whole lot more before it can be realized.  The need for forgiving another tests everything inside us.  Few would blame us if we never achieved the point of being able to see it.  But we have ourselves to live with – and our personal relationship to the Lord of our lives – so wrestling with this need is no small matter to us.  That’s why we have to come to grips with it.

What about the offense is hardest for me to deal with?  What about the offender and our prior relationship helps or hinders me in the process?  What do I hope will happen throughout the Forgiveness Process; do I want to be able to free the offender to live again?  What is the personal cost I am incurring because of my own inner struggles with the process?  What level of relating do I want with the other when this is all over?  What is to be my level of relating to God when I do not forgive?  Do I feel forced to forgive or is it my heart’s delight to be able to share it?  When it is all over with and we are reconciled, what do I want our relating to be like?  These are all important questions because they are windows into our soul.  They are the best indicators of where we stand with the Lord of our lives.  They reflect of view of Him and of life in Christ itself.

The warning bells begin to sound when I find myself dragging my feet in working the Forgiveness Process itself. It indicates I have some unfinished business on the inside that is now getting in the way.  It may be triggered by offenses I have committed that were never really addressed and dealt with.  My hesitation to forgive now may be because of an earlier offense I have been unwilling to deal with and I need to care for it and make amends as possible.  It can also mean I have never really worked on my self-love levels and fear forgiving is going to give something away I really need to retain for myself.  It is forcing me to face my false self and wonder again about my true self – the self God knows and understands.

As a result I am putting all my unfinished stuff on the offense and the offender when in reality I am being not only dishonest but have given myself over to letting someone else deal with my unfinished stuff.  That person has enough stuff of their own to deal with without my garbage being dumped on them.  Who is the true offender here?  It’s probably me.

If I had dealt with my own stuff long ago, like the Holy Spirit wanted me to, would the offense against me been perceived the way it was?   A friend of mine was offended by a layperson on the church staff where she worked.  It was a crushing blow to her because she was already wounded by prior abuse as a child.  Another colleague on the same staff had her own stuff to deal with in the past, but her attitude was what happened to her colleague would have hurt her but it would not have devastated her the way it had her colleague because she had dealt with her own earlier stuff long ago.  Now, what of the offense is real and what of it is magnified by our past and our inability of reluctance to deal with it and get it out of the way?  The Forgiveness Process enables us to deal with our entire lives in a redemptive way and to be in touch with God’s grace and then to be able to claim it and share it with the offender.  This is why the Forgiveness Process can be so hard to complete.  It demands an honesty few are willing to face.

Paul reminds us that the Holy Spirit had shed abroad within our hearts the full love of God.  The Person of Jesus Christ abides within us and the Spirit of God is growing us up into His full image.  If we need to forgive the worst offense imaginable, the Triune God is within us to help us relate to the offender in His love and grace alone.  Of course He can empower us to forgive.  He does not leave us on our own.  We love with His love; we grace the other in His grace.  There is no hindrance He cannot overcome if we allow Him to have His way.  We can claim the victory in His Name.  We can share that victory with one who needs it from us as the one offended.  And that is what we are to do, in His Name.

As we saw in Part 8, it is a decision.  And since we are His child, we allow Him to make it.  It is both as simple and as profound as that.  To God be the glory.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

Part 10:

WHAT TRUE FORGIVENESS LOOKS LIKE

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Introduction

There are three sides to the Forgiveness Process: there is the side of the offended; the side of the offender; and God’s side who sides with the offended, the offender, and the entire Forgiveness Process itself.  God has a vested interest in all involved, whether they recognize Him in it or not.  He gave His Son to provide the forgiveness we all need, and whatever the offense that is involved in this process, He wants us reconciled, forgiven, restored, and fully alive with the grandeur of God.    

Of the three sides of forgiveness, none is more important than His.  His side is binding on the offended and the offender, regardless of the offense.  He is the one who moves us through the Process by the Example of His own Son.  This means that He partners with us as the offended and as the offender.  When we are willing to triangulate with Him, then and only then does the Process work as He intends it to.  That means we are faced with a decision to make.  That is also why we need to allow Him to make that decision on our behalf.

Forgiveness is a Decision

Love is a decision, and so is forgiveness.  It happens when we decide to allow it to happen.  It does not take place apart from the exercising of our will.  And when we become willing to make that decision, it allows God to take over and walk us through the process to His glory and to our own personal joy. As Matthew 18 points out, it is a decision made out of the heart.  As the offended, I decide to forgive and enter into the Forgiveness Process in order to forgive.  Love leaves us no other choice.  Love forgives because that is the nature of love.

If it is not from the heart to the heart, then it is not really forgiveness at all.  It means I have chosen not to forgive and thus my heart is not going to be in it.  But I cannot hide behind the notion “I can’t forgive.”  The truth is I choose not to forgive, therefore it cannot be realized for my heart is not in it.  When Jesus states in Matthew 18 we are to “forgive from the heart, “ there is no other basis for forgiving.  True forgiveness is always a heart-matter.

It is a shared decision.  We do not make that decision on our own: God is a part of it.  He is the One who works with us to realize what needs to happen and why, and He is the One who enables us to make it.  It is not natural to forgive; it is supernatural.  It is God-enabled.  It is God-inspired.  1 John 4 points out that when we forgive we experience God in the process.  “Lord, I know you want me to forgive so we both can be free to live as unto you, but it requires more than I have within myself.  Empower me to do what glorifies You.  Strengthen me with Your forgiveness and grace so I can extend the same to another in Your Name.

The one asking for forgiveness knows it is undeserved just as is God’s forgiveness for all of us.  So he or she is asking for something undeserved but it is also needed if reconciliation is to take place.  When forgiveness is extended, it has to be received as unmerited, undeserved, and a gift freely given based in grace and mercy alone.  The one extending the forgiveness does so knowing their own need before God and knowing how God operates in extending the undeserved to the undeserving.  In forgiveness everyone wins and none loses  When forgiveness is withheld, no one wins, God included.

Both participants meet as equals and meet to create true reconciliation.  In God’s sight the ground at the foot of the Cross is level.  We both stand there in need of forgiveness.  We both stand on common ground.  Neither has power over the other.  The power belongs to God alone, and He extends it to both equally and holds each equally responsible for and to the other.  One has no right to expect forgiveness from the other; the other has no right to withhold forgiveness from the other.   The withholding of forgiveness is a greater offense than what the offender did in the first place.  So now what is the greater sin in God’s eyes?

It is a divine decision because what is done at the human level reaches the divine level as well.  God is in it, and has been from the beginning, leading all the way.  And what happens at the human level has its beginnings at the divine level to begin with. It is the divine level that guarantees the outcome at the human level.  This is why God gets the thanks for the entire process and outcome when forgiveness is realized.

Both the offender and the offended are drawn together by the Spirit of God mediating God’s grace to both.  True contrition and repentance are born of the Spirit of God.  True forgiveness is also born of the Spirit of God.  God is also in the outcome when reconciliation and restoration and new levels of relating are realized and enjoyed.

Forgiveness Is a Life-Giving Decision

It is a life-giving, God-sharing decision.  The one knowing they need forgiveness is stuck in a situation that breeds death and decay, never life.  None of us can stand alienation.  There is no worse feeling than to be alienated when everything within us yearns for reconciliation and oneness.  It worsens with each passing day.  The feeling of hopelessness increases with each passing moment.  When we encounter the one we have offended there is a wall between us that seems impossible to breach.  Like Adam and Eve in the Garden we want to hide because of our sense of personal shame and loss.  How sorry we are for the broken relationship.  How we wish what was done could be undone, but there it stares us in the face.  And the sight of the pain we have created and caused is like a knife in our heart.  What we need is for forgiveness but who has the right to ask?  Look what we have done to ourselves and to the other.

But then something divine and unnatural happens.  The offended life-gifts the offender with the unmerited gift of forgiveness.  The offended, knowing the depths of the grace of God needed within one’s own life, extends that same grace to the offender and together they enter the Forgiveness Process ordained by God Himself.  The offended chooses to bless the offender by life-gifting him or her with the gift God has extended to them in His grace.  They choose to forgive.  Whatever it means for them to do so, they do it out of grace and love.  They life-gift the offender; they love-gift that person in response to their own God-life within them.  They meet as equals at the foot of the Cross and together they embrace as one in Him seeking to become one with each other.  Together they are committing to God and the process He has ordained and it will soon result in a restored oneness between them, and between them and God.  They are now meeting God afresh in and with each other.

Forgiveness is a gift.  You give it in response to a real need in the life of the offender as well as in the life of the offended.  True, it is undeserved, unearned, and unmerited.  That’s why it has to be a gift.  The offended is life-gifting the offender; the offended is life-gifting him- or herself. It is a heart-gift for the freeing of the other into a new level of relating as well as to one’s self.  Since our deepest need is to be loving, and thus forgiving, we are realizing that potential and in reality this is also our personal gift to the Lord of our life.

How That Decision is Made

The initiator is usually the one who has been offended but that is not always the case.  The first to sense the wooing of the Holy Spirit is the one to act first.  The offender decides to take the risk and approach the offended, seeking to initiate the Forgiveness Process.  The offended can also take the risk of approaching the offender, hoping they will find an openness to initiate the Forgiveness Process.  This can take time, but, like the old Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  No journey takes place without the initial step being taken, and the importance is not who acted first, but the fact that the journey has now begun.  Partnership is formed with God in the lead.  Here is a work of grace now in progress, with a predetermined result in mind and heart.  Both want balance and harmony restored.  Both want what God wants for them to experience.

The journey begins with “I statements.”  “I want you to know how badly it makes me feel that things are not right between us and I want you to know I am willing to work at it with you.”  Of course the other can reject the overture, but you have to put it out there for it to be dealt with.  The risk you are taking can be the first step toward reconciliation and restoration.  Hopefully the partnership is formed with God in the lead.  Now it can be guided to a new level of relating never achieved before.

Behind all is the Holy Spirit.  Drawing both to one another as well as to God is the work of the Spirit. God is at work in the entire process.  He is in the forgiveness business.  In Part 9 we will look at what hinders the process and what roadblocks can be encountered, but at this point the first step is being taken, and that opens the door to possibilities we cannot imagine just now.  But our hearts are in it; we want change, and we are going to work together in achieving it.

The Example is the Forgiveness Process of Jesus Himself.  The question facing us is not “What would Jesus Do?” but rather “What are we willing to allow Jesus to do in and through us?”  We are making the decision to open ourselves up to Him and each other so God can work out what He has for us, and we are committed to working at it together to that end.  It is not an easy decision to make.  There is much soul-searching and learning ahead for us both.  But learn we must, for there is more at stake here than either of us could ever realize.  We can’t live with alienation, and neither can God.  That’s why we are willing to follow Jesus’ Example.

All in all it is a work of God and that means both offender and offended have much to learn about grace and love and forgiveness.  This will lead to experiential knowledge.  The Holy Spirit will hold God’s mirror up for us both, as well as give us the insights we need in coming to understand each other.  In a real sense, neither of us will ever be the same again, nor will be our relating to one another and to others.  This is God’s teaching moment.  We will not come up empty.  We will experience God in the process as well as discover so much more about our own true selves.

The Steps to Be Taken

Behind the scenes preparations are being created by the Spirit of God working in the lives of the offended and the offender.  He is helping both see the other with new eyes and forming perceptions that are better aligned with reality.  Hurts tend to create faulty perceptions and guilt does the same for the offender. Both need the mind of Christ to see what God knows is present with each.

Our self-perceptions are also going through needed changes leading each more and more into the discernment of the Spirit of God.  This allows for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to take over more and as a result truth surfaces on both sides of the equation.  Compassion begins to emerge; understanding begins to take shape.  Hope for what can be is also taking shape as the process moves through its stages.

All this is building a safe and workable environment for grace to be at work.  Change is in the making.  Both can envision meeting together on level ground at the foot of His Cross where both are sinners, both are forgiven, and both have a real need for each other.  This leads to what is best for both parties and how we can create it.  There is an openness of acceptance and desire for mutual gain.  Both now have areas each can work on if the process is to reach completion.

The invitation has been shared that can lead to working together as equals.  A positive response has been shared bringing both together on common ground.  There is a mutual desire to work on this together.  It can only work when both are working at it together.  Now we are ready to make the necessary steps to achieve what the Process promises.  We are now ready to begin.  Our mutual prayer is that the Spirit will be in the lead, that He will draw both of us into the fulfilling of God’s will for us, and that He will also lead us to spend as much time as needed for a meaningful completion to each of the steps involved.

1. Contrition:    Pain has been inflicted.  An offense has taken place.  A wound has been inflicted.  On the part of the offender, this calls for contrition.  “I am sincerely sorry for what I did and for all that offense cost you.”  Contrition exposes the heart of the offender to the offended and shares with the offended one’s ownership of the offense and expresses a genuine sorrow for all this has brought to the offended.  As Matthew 18 points out, forgiveness must be extended as an extension of the heart of the offended and the contrition is an extending of the heart of the offender to the offended.  Not only is contrition a genuine sorrow, it is also a Godly-sorrow.  “I am sick at heart over what I have done to you.”A colleague of mine was asked by his young daughter, “Daddy, when does God forgive?”  He thought about it and wanting to put it into terms she would understand, he said, “Honey, I guess it’s when God hears the sss of sorry.”  In reality, it is when the heart issues it’s “sorry,” and that needs to be before it is shared with the offended.  To come in any other frame of mind is to negate the process.  Genuine sorrow is measurable.  It has a ring of truth to it.  The offended hears and sees its genuineness.Asking to be forgiven comes after owning the offense.  Owning the offense also includes the offended’s perception of the offense.  The offender needs to hear what all this means to the offended, and this is where the truth needs to be shared.  What is being owned by the offender needs to be clearly understood by the offended, and the perception of the offended needs to be clearly understood by the offender.  This leads to a meeting of the hearts of both.
2. Confession:    Contrition is the beginning of the confession.  It is the contrite heart that knows how to truly confess the offense.  The word “confess” means “to say the same thing.”  If you betrayed a confidence you don’t confess to having made a mistake.  You acknowledge I betrayed a confidence.  Not only do I confess I betrayed a confidence but I must also confess what this did to the relationship, what this did to the one offended, and what my action has meant to all concerned.  In other words, what is the true offense and its true cost to all involved?A good rule of thumb is to make the circle of the offense the circle of the confession.  If my offense hurt the offended and his or her family or whatever, then that circle is to become the circle of the confession.  State what was done, all who were hurt by it, and what the offended has had to face as a result of my betrayal.  I also need to confess to my Heavenly Father what my offense has caused Him as well as to His Son and Spirit.  All of this has to be from the heart.  If I can describe to the offended what I know to be the full implications of the offense, then my confession is genuine.  Nothing less will ever do.
3. Acceptance:    To accept the confession of the offended is to offer forgiveness for the offense and everything that accompanies it.  I have told you I am sorry, I have made my confession, and your reaction is to extend your forgiveness by accepting my offering and now accepting me as the offender.  I do not deserve forgiveness, I cannot merit it, nor is it owed me.  It is pure grace on your part as the offended.  But you entered the Forgiveness Process with me in the hope that forgiveness could be shared and its resultant reconciliation achieved.  I need your forgiveness.  I cannot be whole apart from it.  Your acceptance of my contrition and confession is your acceptance of me.The basis of your forgiveness is within your own heart as well as within God’s.  I have no claim on it.  I need it; I want it; I hope for it; I pray for it.  But it is your gift to me based on your own heart and your relationship to the One who offers forgiveness to us both.  Now that you are extending it to me, I want to tell you what this means to me and what I hope and pray will become ours in building the relationship I hope we may have growing out of this exchange.Forgiveness is a relational term.  It is what brings two alienated persons back together again.  We were once together.  I did something to violate that relationship.  You ended up over there; I am over here.  There is a void between us.  Now I have confessed the offense and you have chosen in grace to accept my confession and to forgive what I did against you.  Now we are back together again.  Where it goes from here is for us to decide as we work the Forgiveness Process together.  Hopefully it will be stronger and better as it progresses.
4. Restitution:    If I betrayed you, I can make amends by going to others and taking ownership of my offense and its cost to you.  If I took from you I can make restitution.  If it was something that cannot be corrected, then perhaps the only restitution possible is to acknowledge my true debt and see that it does not happen again.  If restitution is possible, it needs to be part of the contract between us in seeking to reconcile.In Old Testament times, when a debt was incurred, restitution meant paying back the loss with interest.  The interest was set at 20%.  If I stole $100, I was to pay back $120.  If I stole ten lambs and butchered them, I was to give back 12.  In other words, the offended was entitled to compensation.  But what of offenses that were of a spiritual or emotional nature?  That could be worked out between the offended and the offender.  Here the Holy Spirit needs to be the Guide.  Penance is a useful and healing tool when used of the Spirit.  Penance is never in payment for an offense.  It is a reminder to the penitent that every offense costs the offended something.  It acknowledges the penitent’s true debt to another.
5. Reconciliation:    Grace is at its best when it comes to reconciliation.  It takes two and makes them as one.  It reopens a closed door and says, “Come in!”  It breaks down the wall that had been built up by the offense and invites the offended and the offender to begin again.  They are now back in fellowship with each other.  Not only can they talk and commune with one another, they are also in a position to embrace and to say how good it feels to be together again.  How hard it was when they were estranged.  But now that is behind them.Being reconciled to one another also impacts their relating to God and to others.  The alienation when they were alienated ruptured their relationship with each other, but also with God and with their own True Selves.  They were not living and relating as God intended.  But now,  being reconciled, harmony and balance are being restored.Reconciliation is a gift we give ourselves and the Body of Christ as well as to the offender.  Our alienation takes away from all our relating and reconciliation restored things.  Now that we are back in communion with one another, we can go on and build from here.  It is God’s will for us that we be reconciled with God/others/self/and life as He intends it to be lived.  Reconciliation mends the relationship; restoring the balance and harmony the Spirit wills for us.
6. Restoration:    In reconciliation we do not say, “Okay, now we’re even.  You offended and have confessed, and I have forgiven, so now we’re even.  You go your way and I’ll go mine.”Reconciliation brings us back together and now the Forgiveness Process moves us into the state of Restoration in which we commit and work together in allowing God to make it all it needs to be.   Being back together is the beginning.  Now the new building begins.  What we need between us is more than we may have had before.  The Holy Spirit wants to offense-proof the relationship as well as to share with us what we could have between us that was not present before.  Why settle back into what was there before; why not allow the Spirit to lift us beyond that into something new?  God is in it; what might He have in mind for us to share?Grace has a way of making any relationship stronger at the point where it broke apart in the first place.  Neither of you are the persons you were when the break occurred so why not allow the Spirit to create something new and stronger?  Marriage and family relationships are welded when the breaking points are restored by His grace.  This allows for new growth, a new sense of purpose and fulfillment.  This is how grace operates.
7. Celebration:    With all that has taken place and with things now restored and moving in deeper and greater ways, we need to celebrate.  We need to celebrate the grace of God.  The Forgiveness Process.  Reconciliation and restoration.  New life.  Forgiveness.  You name it.  We need to acknowledge God’s role in all this, the work we have done in reaching this point together, and in all that can now be achieved because of forgiveness.  God is to be praised.Thanking God for one another.  Thanking Him for the circle of those who supported us and worked with us as our encouragers.  Those who are now celebrating with us.  Together we are praising God for a grace that is greater than all our sin.The Church Family needs to be included in this celebration when it is appropriate.  The message which undergirds any local fellowship is that of forgiveness, reconciliation, and new life.  Such a celebration is a living example of its message in action.  When a relationship is restored and enhanced it encourages us all, especially those who still struggle with brokenness and alienation.  We all are in need of it, are we not?
8. Renewal and Continuation:    A relationship has not only been saved, it is now on its way to a new level of wholeness and continuing growth.  We are seeing grace at work.  We are being His grace in the life of another.  We are personally witnessing what God can do when allowed to have His way among us.  This encouraged us to claim the full workings of His grace in our life together.  See what God can do.  See what God is doing.Whether we are aware of it or not, or choose to recognize it or not, when there is any level of alienation within a relationship, a family, a community, and a local fellowship, it impacts us all.  It hurts us all, even though we may not be directly involved with the ones who are at its center.  It ripples outward throughout the community.  The more of it that is present, the more it becomes our focus, and it wears on us, even when we are not conscious of it doing so.  But when alienation is absent and grace is abounding, that impacts the entire community as well.  The one we need; the other we must work to minimize and eliminate.  We know this is what God wills for us as His own.
9. Mutuality:    Paul teaches us we are “members one of another.”  We are all in this together.  There is a “weness” we must strive to maintain, for the benefit of the entire Body.  This is why alienation as well as the Forgiveness Process has to be binding on us all.  We pray for all involved, encourage all who are involved, and at the same time hold them accountable to the whole Body for how things are or are not resolved.  What happens when there is alienation within a relationship, marriage, family, or community?  Harmony and balance are disturbed.  How long can it be endured without deeper damage being incurred?  It hurts us all.  It hinders us all.How are we to grow up more and more into Him when we are being hindered by alienation?  Did not Christ die to make us all one?  Alienation must be confronted and resolved to God’s glory.
10. Shared Maturing:    We don’t grow because everything is sweetness and light.  We grow best when we are challenged to grow, and what challenges us most is the presence of alienation and dis-ease.  It unbalances the whole and creates disharmony within the whole.  To restore the whole we need to restore its parts.  What results is a shared maturing; the Body is growing up into what He desires it to become and be.  This is how He is glorified best.He cannot raise us up beyond where we are willing to go.  Our continuing growth depends on this mutuality.  He’ll do the raising up when we are willing to allow Him to do His work among us.  We are also lifting one another up in the process.Forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration are not options.  They are God’s will for His own.  They are gifts we cannot do without.

In Conclusion

“Never again!”  That is what we exclaim when reconciliation and restoration have been realized.  1 John tells us that never ffending again is possible, if God’s is allowed His rightful place within our thinking, feeling, and acting.  But, if an offense should occur, the same grace and forgiveness process is still available to all who need it.  The more that is exchanged and shared between the original offender and offended, makes it that much harder to offend ever again.  Remember what Peter asked of Jesus, “If my brother offends me should I forgive him seven times?”  And what did Jesus reply?  In essence He said, “As often as needed to maintain the relationship.  The relationship is more important than any issue between you.”  Do you agree with Jesus’ answer?  God does!  And that’s how God’s grace operates.  You cannot forgive another without experiencing God in the process.  No issue is ever as important as our relationship to Him.

Offender and the offended are claiming God’s forgiveness together.  They believe it…it is real to them and they both testify to this reality.  They have seen it with their own eyes as it has unfolded between them and in them.  They have become it…by living it, practicing it, sharing it and being it.  They have both come to feel it ..and to rejoice in it’s presence within and between them.  Now they want to share it.

Thank God for the Forgiveness Process!  Thank God for His forgiveness!

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

WHEN THE PROCESS IS BLOCKED

EJA:07/09.

Introduction

Whenever we sustain an offense – the deeper the offense, the deeper the reaction –  the first thing we need to do is make a reality check.  Our natural instinct may be a knee-jerk reaction, an immediate questioning of “Why me?” or worse, to catastrophize and want to strike out in self-defense.  This is no time for irrational thinking to take over, but an honest assessment of what has happened and what does it mean.  The blame-game is part of our culture and if allowed to take over, a relationship that has been traumatized can be injured further, and the new injury may close the door for any real reconciliation and understanding to materialize.

Did what I think happened really happen?  How am I to make sense of it and come to a rational conclusion?  How do I keep my thinking straight so my emotions do not take over and run ahead of me?  How important is this relationship to me?   How important is it to the offender?  How do I want all of this to end?  What is this telling me about myself?  What is it I am really feeling?  I know I am angry.  I know I am feeling betrayed.  I know my world is crashing down around my ears.  But what I also need to know is where is God in all this?

What is Going On and Why

My first reaction is anger.  I am angry at being treated like this.  I liked things as they were and now look what has happened.  Who needs this?

But, at the same time, if I am honest with myself, I know that anger is not the primary emotion.  I have to take time out, deal with any and all irrational thinking and reality test what I am truly feeling.  I am going to find what I need to know lying beneath the angry feelings that are so real just now.  It’s a whole lot easier to be angry than it is to go beneath it and see what’s really there.  But when I do go beneath it and search out my true feelings, and begin to deal with them.  That’s the only way to hope and eventual healing.  If I’m not careful and real honest with myself, I can get stuck in my anger and stay there for however long and for whatever reason.  And where will this get me?

Getting in touch with my true feelings allows me to better understand my true reaction and as a result stay in balance and allow God’s Spirit to deal with the whole matter and its outcome.  I do need this to happen.  There is more at stake here than I will ever realize at the moment.  There is much I need to learn, being in this bind, and if God is allowed to be in control, I will come out the other end a different person than I was at the moment of the offense.

How many people do I know and have encountered who remained focused solely on their anger and how it dominated and corroded their whole lives?  Way too many.  Since their anger is not their true primary emotion, they never heal.  They wrap themselves in that anger and with a major chip on their shoulder and an even bigger one eating away at their heart, they rehearse their anger at the drop of a hat to any ear willing to listen.  They put the needle on the record and play it over and over as if to convince themselves as well as others.  This is so common that when we do hear of a forgiveness story we perk up our ears and listen with our hearts, for it is so unnatural and refreshing.  It’s like hearing a miracle.  Grace at work is always miraculous.

Dealing With Our Anger

Anger is such a dishonest emotion that we have to work hard at legitimizing it and at the same time find ways to live with it.  Let me list for you some of the ways this anger gets used.

1.  Putting it on others. We choose to focus our anger-energies on others, on things, or causes, on the actions of others, and to put it out there without taking ownership of the real source that resides within us – in our thinking, feeling, and actions.  It’s like road-rage.  A driver leaves home with a bag of anger and then finds a victim in traffic he can take it out on.  Or he goes to a bar, has a few drinks, then explodes on some poor victim he has singled out to dump it on.  Or he’s angry with his wife for a suspected infidelity and takes it out on the or kicking the dog.  Our prisons are filled with loads of anger-filled hearts that were wounded by significant others during their childhood, and society has been paying the debt ever since.

2. Swallowing it. There are several causes of depression, and a major one is anger that we have chosen to swallow rather than to deal with it and put it in the garbage where it belongs.  Some put it on others and sin against them.  Many more swallow it and sin against themselves.  As a Christian I know from Scripture I am not to put it on others, but putting it on one’s self is equally sinful.  A depressed Christian can gain a martyr’s medal around the Church but putting it on others can get you shunned.  To sin against the Holy Spirit by inflicting it on His temple is going to get us nowhere.  Such anger is in itself a sin against the self as well as against God.  Don’t swallow it; flush it!

3.  Denying it. Everyone close to me knows I am angry, especially my family and close friends, but I am living in denial.  “No, I am not angry!” and I can say it with clenched teeth and a clenched fist.  Of course, I am struggling with depression, anxiety, heart palpitations, night sweats, weight loss or gain, and overreactions, but, “No, I am not angry.”  Then why do I have to go out of my way to seek to prove I am not angry, when all about me tells you otherwise.  I seem to be the only one who’s not in touch with what is really going on inside me.  My body knows otherwise.

4.  Facing it. Coming to grips with it forces me to look beneath it and to get in touch with my true feelings.  Anger can be a comfort of sorts because it allows me to remain in denial, but anger also has its price.  By facing it, I am on the path of reality testing what is really there.  Now I am going to learn the truth about this as well as about me.

1. Is it hurt?    The deep emotion I have been experiencing is one of hurt – pure, unadulterated, all-consuming hurt.  I was so devastated by what was done and as a result my inner world felt like it was collapsing.  It frightened me.  Now that I know what it is, I can let the anger go, and face the hurt and all it is costing me.  Now I can get the help I need.  Anger is mostly to keep people away and prevent them from asking questions.  Now that I understand it as hurt, I can share it; I can get help.  I will no longer feel unique in my loss.
2. Is it jealousy?     Am I fearful that a relationship I once prized so highly is now going to be taken from me?  Does it mean the offender is now moving away from me?  Does it mean it may be all over and we’ll never have closeness ever again?  Is this telling me something about us I don’t want to hear?
3. Is it dejection?    An act that endangers the relationship is not always an act of rejection.  It may feel like it, but when we name it we are now in a position to see it for what it really is.  Feeling dejected because of an offense does not mean I am being rejected and that the relationship is over.  But now that I have labeled it I am really feeling it, now I can deal with the feelings and make sense of it.
4. Is it pain?     The pain is so intense, nothing makes any sense at all.  But now that I have identified my feeling as one of pain, I can now work with it for understanding and meaning.  Pain clouds the issue, my thinking, and my praying.  There is no reasoning amidst intense pain.  The sense of suffering is too overwhelming.  Naming it has helped me see what needs to follow in order to relieve it.
5. Is it fear?    Anger, in any shape or form, has within it an element of fear.  But when I am honest in facing my fear, naming it as such, I take back the power I was putting into it by allowing it to take control of me.  It’s much easier to express anger than it is to admit fear.  Anger can give off a false sense of empowerment; fear is just the opposite.  Anger empowers the fear and allows it to control.  When I face it and take away its power then I am again in control of me.  Now I can act to work through the fear and gain what I want most: self-control.

The primary element under anger is that of fear, whether it takes on any of these other feelings such as hurt, jealousy, rejection, or pain.  Fear is a primary emotion, and it invades and permeates what’s motivating the anger in the first place.   It also bears within it a sense of loss.  Know this about yourself and your reactions.  We need to act, not react, but fear knows only how to react.  Love alone, based in self-love, knows how to act.

5.  Moving through it. The offense took place at point A and where this all needs to end is marked as point N or Q or T or Z, depending on what is envisioned by working through The Forgiveness Process.  We won’t know the end until we have willingly and effectively worked through the process.  If we work it well, only grace will determine the ultimate goal of the process.  Since it is a process, it must take it a step at a time.  Some days may mean three steps forward, and one back.  When we get to where we are taking three steps forward and none back, we have found our stride.  But we’re moving in the right direction.  Our hearts will know when we are nearing the potential goal of reconciliation and restoration.  The relationship we end up in will be more than we could have imagined.  Today we recognize we are not where it once was, but at the same time we are still not yet where we need to be.  So we persevere; we keep moving ahead in grace.

6.  Displacing it. How often we hear someone lament, “I’m learning to forgive but I’m having a hard time with forgetting.”  Of course you are.  Who isn’t?  A deep and genuine hurt is not easily healed.  But grace does offer us that potential.  The need is to focus not on the offense but rather on the goal of the process and to envision what that is going to be and how it is going to feel to achieve that space.  The more we keep looking back, the more the offense remains present.  But when we focus on what lies ahead, and how it is going to feel when that potential has been realized, we take the power away from the past and place it within the present and use it to achieve the future we are envisioning.

Displacement works like this.  When I remain in the past and continue to feel the fear, the sense of betrayal, the sense of loss because a valued relationship has now been crippled, that is where I am presently focused and thus living.  I can stay there and nurse that hurt for the rest of my life.  But, if I seek to displace that hurt with the freedom of forgiveness and the potential for full reconciliation and renewal, my present thoughts, feelings and actions are all focused on what grace can provide here and now.  I’ve made a decision to let go of the hurt and claim the thrill and freedom of having let it go.  Now what takes the place of the old?  I am open to the new.  I am partnering with God to create the new.

7.  Completing it. Here’s where we are now; this is where we hope to be.  So what needs to be in place and what needs to be accomplished in order to realize that goal?  This is what we are going to achieve together.  If we need outside help in achieving this, we will seek it.  The Forgiveness Process possesses a motivation and inner empowerment that can take us far beyond anything we have ever known in the past.  As low as we may have been when the offense occurred, we have been working on getting out of that pit and getting back on solid ground, then reaching far beyond that to something we never thought possible even on the best of days.  Now He is lifting us – the two of us – to new levels of relating for we have allowed His grace to take control.  No relationship – no marriage or family – ever reaches the point where growth is complete.  So why stop where we are?  Why not just keep on growing?  Consider it finalized only when one of us is called Home.

8.  Learning from it. What has all this taught me about myself?  What have I learned about the other person?   What have we learned about the process and how it can work?  What have we learned to help us never go down this old road again?  What are the questions this process has asked of us?  How well did each of us work together in fulfilling the process?   How good did it feel to be able to release the offender and to work toward restoring our relationship?    How good did it feel to be forgiven and know the offense had been removed and we could now work toward reconciliation and restoration?  How do we see each other now, from this side of the process?  Where did we find God in all of this?  Now how can we help others facing the same process?

9.  Growing by it. This is who I was when this all started.  This is who I am today, thanks to God’s grace.  I can not go back to where I was before.  The Forgiveness Process has held up a mirror to me and I did not like what I was seeing.  That is why I need to keep on growing, and by God’s grace, I intend to keep right on growing.  What else do I need to face and let go of in order to continue growing?

I am pledging myself to life-long learning.  This is what being a child of God is all about.

10.  Letting it go. What parts of the experience and the process do I need to hold on to for the rest of my personal journey?  What parts of it do I need to let go of and move beyond? Letting go of an offense is in no way to diminish what happened or why.  But it is to put it in its proper place.  Since God has made all things new for us by buying our past and nailing it to His Cross, then I need to leave it in His hands alone.  To take it back is to affront that grace and what He has done on my behalf.  If I go around holding on to it, then how do I take hold of what He has in store for me?  My hand is already full.  I have no room for something new and exciting from Him.

When I moved to California in 1952 to attend college, I determined to see the sights when ever we had a break from studies.  Over Thanksgiving my roommate and I went to San Francisco for our first time.  One of our visits was to the Zoo.  When we stopped at Monkey Island, new parents were swinging from limbs and sailing through the air with their young clinging tightly to their backs.  It was a fun time on the Island.  But not for one mother.  Her young one was dead.  It hung lifeless in her embrace.  But, holding her baby in one arm and swinging from limb to limb with the other, she tried to keep up with the others.  She tried to play the same game of keeping up appearances.  I have met so many people clinging to their hurts, trying to live life to the full.  But the weight of their hurt brought only death and regret.  It’s time to let go.

Learning the Lessons of Grace

Learn the lesson of the oyster.    One day an oyster living in the oyster beds in Tamales Bay near Inverness, Marin Country, CA, awoke to a painful realization, a foreign piece of quartz had entered its tranquil life.   Lodged in a place where it could not be dislodged, its irritating, sharp edges made itself known and felt.  What was the oyster to do?  Whatever it was, the oyster’s life had changed.  It was obvious this intrusion had to be handled.  This poor oyster needed help, and fast.  However, the only one he/she/it could rely on was Mother Nature and self.

Identifying the intrusion was helpful, but what to do about it would prove the greatest challenge this poor oyster had ever experienced.  Something had to be done; instinct kicked in.  There was only one real solution that made any sense at all.  This calls for an internal job.  The time to begin was now!

The oyster began to secrete a milky substance and this was applied to the intrusive piece of quartz.  Day after day, patiently and with determination, layer upon layer were applied until the sharp, pointed edges lost their painful powers and gradually the rough shape of the quartz began to take on a new shape.  The pain was lessened; life was eased.  Hope was gained.

Now with balance slowly being restored and life back as it once had been, the oyster begins to perceive the irritant in a new light.  No more rough edges; no more suffering.  And in its place was the making of a pearl.  Maybe it’s not perfect, or the best of colors, but it’s on the way to completion.  And now new questions arise.

What would it be like if that irritating piece of quartz had not invaded my comfortable little shell-home?  What if I was still back where I used to be?  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not so naive as to think I must be thankful for the irritant that brought suffering.   But I know One who is able to make all things work together for good, because He loves me and wants the very best for me.  I do not thank Him for the intrusion but I do thank Him for the grace that made it into a pearl.

In human relating, the pearl then becomes the gift we give to our Maker for a grace and love that sustained us and has brought us through to new levels of being and doing.  Out of suffering can come a pearl of great price.  It is no coincidence that the Book of Revelation states the Gates of Heaven are made of pearl.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation are Pearl Making

Forgiveness releases the offender so he/she can get back into fellowship with God, others, self, the offended and life as God intends it to be lived.  Forgiveness also allows the offended to re-enter the same.  Both are set free to be and become.  That is what God’s grace is all about.  In this process both experience the Presence of God.  They also are able to move closer to their True Selves.  They know this would not have come about without His intervention.  That is why the pearl is presented to Him and not worn around one’s own neck.  After all, look all He has forgiven both the offended and the offender.  In His sight we are all offenders.  Our offenses cost Him His Son.  No higher price could ever be paid.

Rejoicing in His Presence and in the new me, life has changed, and all for the better.  We know God is in it.  The Fruit of His Spirit as described in Galatians 5:22-23, is now manifesting itself.  The reality of His love is here.

Corrie Ten Boom and her sister and father turned their home into a hiding place for Jews during the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands.  Neighbors sympathetic to the Nazis turned them in.  As punishment they were sent, along with the Jews they were hiding, to a Nazi Concentration Camp. Her father, too old for slave labor, died soon after their arrival.  She and her sister Betsy were forced to work.  The brutality and near starvation conditions soon wore Betsy down, and one evening when returning to Camp from her work detail, Corrie saw the body of her beloved sister on the pile of the day’s dead, soon to be cremated.   It was a horrible blow for Corrie.

Soon after the war’s end, Corries regained her health and returned to Germany to share God’s love and forgiveness with the German people.  One Sunday evening, speaking in the basement of a bombed out Church, Corrie was confronted by the main guard from their camp who had brutalized both she and Betsy.  She believed him to be the main cause of Betsy’s dying.  She felt revulsion at seeing him again.

He came up to her after she spoke to the people, introduced himself as a former guard of her particular prison camp, then told her how missionaries had told him of Christ after the war had ended.   He had given his life to Christ and that meant he was now forgiven and was Corrie’s brother in Christ.  Then he asked her for her forgiveness as her brother in Christ.  He stuck out his hand for Corrie to take in her own.

She began to fumble in her purse, not returning his gaze, as emotions came bounding up from deep within her that stopped and stuck in her throat.  How could she forgive him for what he had done to her and especially to Betsy?

Quietly but firmly, she heard the Spirit of God speak to her and say, “Corrie, I have forgiven him.  He is now your brother.  Take his hand.”   As she took his hand and looked into his face, she says she felt a flood of feeling rising within her that could only be described as the very love of God shed abroad within her heart by the Spirit of God Himself.  For her, it was a final coating of grace on a pearl of great price she was offering her Lord.  She was standing in the presence of the One who makes all things new!  We cannot forgive another without experiencing God in the process.

If you really want to experience God in your life, then learn to forgive, in His Name.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month:

HOW FORGIVENESS IS MADE TO HAPPEN

We lived next to the center of our small New England hometown and had a large front yard so local kids congregated there for a ball game after school.  Our Dad had only one rule: make it softball, not baseball.  Well, on this particular afternoon, I was at bat, my brother Jack was pitching, and we were playing baseball, not softball.  Dad was at work, so we thought.  Jack threw me a strike; I connected with the ball, and it left the yard traveling over the hedge separating ours from the neighboring property and went through a second story window of the Doolittle Women’s Rest Home next door.  Just as the window shattered and I headed for first base, Dad came around the corner and caught us in the act. 

He got out of his truck, came over to get me and marched me to the front door of the home.  When the Matron came to the door my father introduced me as the culprit that had broken the window.  She glared down at me, then turned back to my father.  She was glad to know who was responsible, but, as she shared with him, what she cared more about was who was going to pay for the window and the cleanup?  I didn’t have any money.  No allowance I ever had would repay what was owed.  My father had to pay.  I later paid in other ways, but he had to put out the cash for the damage I had done.

The lesson in all this, is whatever we do and however we offend another, it is always the Father that has to pay.  Whenever there is a need for forgiveness in any relationship the Father pays to make forgiveness possible.

Forgiveness didn’t begin with us.  It isn’t of human origin.  God Himself is in the process as well as behind it no matter who else is involved, and even when there is no acknowledgment of Him in the process, He is there, often the unseen and unrecognized participant within the forgiveness process.  It all begins and ends in Him.  Human nature’s tendency is refusing to forgive, to reconcile and too often seeking revenge and getting-even.  It is God who invented reconciliation, forgiveness and restoration.  It is God who partners with us throughout the entire process.  And when it comes to paying a price, His part is the greatest of all.

God Pays Supremely

There is never an offense committed between two human beings but what it wounds God most of all.   Offenses matter to God even more than they do to the one being offended.  His concern is for the offended as well as the offender, for any and every offense impacts both the offended’s and the offenders’s relating to Him and He to them.  This cost can never be reckoned by us, for we only see it from our own perspective.  What it means to Him escapes us even when we seek to understand it from His side.  More is hidden than can ever be revealed to us because we are not in tune with looking at it through His eyes alone.

The Cross tells the full story.  This is what God was willing to do in order to offer us His forgiveness that forms the basis for all our forgiving and being forgiven.  The whole forgiveness process partakes of His willingness to forgive us and to cleanse us from all our wrongdoing. Not only did He invent it; He provided it with the sacrificing of His own Son on our behalf.  This is what His love was willing to do.

Forgiveness is a command – it’s the outcome of loving.  When He commanded us to love one another with His love that the Spirit has shed abroad within our hearts, He was also commanding us to forgive for forgiveness is a fruit of His love at work within us.  This is what love is all about.  Love works the process until reconciliation and restoration have been realized.  Love makes all things new and right.  To love is to forgive.  For us not to forgive is a witness to our unlovingness.

The Offended Pays

The summer between high school and my first year of college I worked as a swimming instructor and lifeguard at a camp in New Hampshire.  Since the job came with room and board, I was able to squirrel away most of my income for college.  At the end of the summer I returned home and began packing for the move to a campus in another state.  My older brother came to me saying he needed some money and would pay me back before I left for school.  So I loaned him about a third of all I had saved.  After all, he is my brother.  But he never repaid the loan.  That meant I was out a third of what I needed for school.  What did forgiving him cost me?  The money.  A bag of lousy feelings.  The loss of trust.  The pain of knowing all that had happened and its implications for me and for us.  The money was important to me, but not as important as the relationship.  Forgiveness had to be a part of it.  We are family.

Everyone who is ever offended knows a lot of what it costs to be offended.  But every offended person is different and every offense carries with it baggage that is not easily assessed.  Each relationship between the offended and offender carries baggage of its own.  What makes the difference between one who shrugs it off and another who finds it the straw that breaks the camel’s back?  We all have a history we bring to every experience we encounter and that encounters us.  We act and react out of what is down inside us, even when we are not aware of what that may be.  A ten-percent offense to one may be an 80-percent to another.  An imagined offense may be a real offense to another.  It is our perception that helps determine the cost we pay for having been offended.

Its impact on the offended varies also.  An impact may be life-threatening, life-changing, life-altering, and all this has to do with the debt incurred by the offense.  Not even the offended may realize the full cost.  The actual cost of any offense is not just in dollars and cents.  It has an emotional element as well.  This may be far more costly than any other aspect of having been offended.  Sometimes there is no end to the offended’s having to pay.  An offense that is life-changing exacts a price that never ends.  Think of parents whose murdered child is forever lost to them.  When do they stop paying?

The greatest cost is in refusing to forgive and to reconcile.  This is when the offended becomes the offender, offending God and themselves.  Often the original offense suffered is not as great as the offense of not being willing to enter into the forgiveness process.  Now the offended becomes the offender, and this prohibits the forgiveness process from even beginning.

The Offender Pays

What is lost first is any trust level another may have had in the offender, for the offense has broken it.  Whatever level of trustworthiness had been present is now shattered, especially with the offender.  Two people in relationship, and one breaks the trust between them, does not usually stop with the two.  Each relates to others and the circle of the offense begins to widen as others learn of the mistrust that has been formed by the offense.  The offender finds him-/herself questioned by others as well.  When the offense disrupts the relationship between the two, the circle tends to widen until some form of reconciliation takes place.  Like the ripples created when a stone is dropped into a pool of water, the ripples radiate outward and the first question that gets asked is who caused the ripple?

Trust is absolutely essential to any real relationship.  The greater the trust, the greater the offense when it is violated, and the greater the level of pain to all involved, for the offender, too.  Seeing the pain caused to another feeds the guilt and shame of the offender.  It forces us to see what our offense had created.  The more who share in it and know about it, the greater the pain for the offender.

Guilt and shame that accrues needs to be dealt with, and the sooner the better.  The longer it stands, the deeper it goes, and it does not stop of itself.  These things are never buried dead, rather they are alive and festering.  The deeper pain needs to be felt by the offender for it teaches us about what not to do or once done, never to do it again.  Saying one is sorry for what one did is not the same as feeling genuine sorrow that can lead to true repentance and a changed way of relating.

Another part of the pain for the offender may come in the offended’s refusal to enter the forgiveness process and to close the door to any and all forms of reconciliation.  What was once a prized relationship may now be over for the offended has closed the door and it is a door an offender cannot force open.  Jesus’ ideal of forgiving seventy times seven is only realized when the offended is willing.  Now what does the offender do?

Knowing what it has cost others should be a sobering reality for any offender, but there has to be a further understanding that reconciliation is not deserved nor ever earned.  One can plead and beg but cannot coerce.  Forgiveness is an ideal, but some are not able or willing to grant it.  Now the offender must live with the results.

The emotional cost is enormous for the offender as well as the offended.  What does it take to look the injured in the eye and own your offense and all its implications and ask to be forgiven when you are undeserving of it?   Forgiveness is always a matter of grace.  The offender is always in the place of maybe being turned down.  What will be its price to the offender?

Nothing is more costly than is alienation.  What issue is there that is worth destroying a relationship?  Do things matter more to us than people?  Are we not judged by God more over relationships than anything else?  How do we answer to Him for what we have done to one another?

What is the price of  guilt?  It impacts us physically, mentally, spiritually, psychologically, morally, ethically, relationally and emotionally.

How does the offender learn to forgive him-/herself?  When the relationship has been destroyed by the offense and reconciliation is now impossible, how do we deal with the guilt from that reality?  Dealing with ourselves now has been made so much worse.

The Circle of All Involved Pays

I was away working with a church in conflict and before heading back home to Donna I called to check in.  She informed me that one of my other churches was in conflict and needed a call from me and a personal visit first thing in the morning.  I called the Pastor and found out an staff member of the church had lured a young teenager into the church library, had raped and murdered her and hidden her body in a church trash container.  Once arrested, he had confessed to the crime in order to avoid the death penalty.

Now think with me about the circle of this offense:  The dead girl and all her family, the Pastor and Church in which the leader served, his family and all his acquaintances, all who had any relationship with the congregation, then the community in which the Church served.  Where does it go from there?  This rippled through the 220 Churches of our denominational region, and all who read the grisly facts and details in their local papers.  The truth is, it reaches all the way to Heaven and the very heart of God.

How did the local Church handle this ordeal?  Some leaders said “we need to support the perpetrator for he is a brother in Christ.”  Others felt he had betrayed everything they stood for as a Church.  Because the leaders supportive of the perpetrator looked down on those who were of a different mind, the Church was beginning to disintegrate.  The Pastor who had trusted the guilty person was so devastated he soon left.  The community was now referring to the church as “that Church.”  The grandmother of the victim stated in the media, “If that is how God’s people operate, who needs them?”  As spokesperson for the congregation with the media, I shared with listeners our sorrow over this incident and our prayer support of the family in their loss.  I knew also that in time the church needed to be closed down and after a lot of healing maybe it could be reopened again or the property sold to another group.  This took place some twenty years ago and many still speak of “that Church.”  Some wounds only Heaven can heal.

The emotional cost is the greatest toll.  When do you get over the fact a layleader you trusted was in reality a cover-opposite, and beneath his spiritual jargon lay a deceiver’s heart and mind feeding on porn and everything the Church would never tolerate?  A young teen walking through the Church’s parking lot on her way to the public library to work on a school assignment was lured into the Church’s library under the rouse of saving her the long walk to the library.  Once inside she is accosted, raped, murdered and stuffed into a garbage bag which also contained some literature with the Church’s identity on it.  Then it was dumped by the side of the road as the man went on his way home to his wife and family.  This sent the detectives to the Church and soon to the custodian who was also a member of the leadership team, and his answers to the detectives aroused their suspicions.  A search of his home produced all the evidence they would need to tie him to the murder and attempted coverup.  His plea-bargained confession allowed him to plead guilty in Court and thus escape the death penalty.  But that’s all he escaped.

The circle of the offense is to be the circle of the restoration, but in this case how much reconciling can take place?  Between the man and his wife?  Between the man and the victim’s family?  Between the man and his True Self?  Between the man and the Church?  Between the man and the community, and society?  Life, without the possibility of parole, leaves him the rest of his life to work on it, but God is to be His primary focus.  When it happens there, it can extend to others open to it.  But the forgiveness he needs most at the human level cannot be his.  His victim is not here to give it.

The Price Paid By Each Totaled Up…Plus Interest

Perhaps now we are getting more of an understanding as to why God takes offenses so seriously.  Not only did they cost God His Son, but the cost to others – to life itself – is staggering.  Can you imagine life without any offenses?  What would the world be like if the Kingdom of God was truly reigning?  Look what it is like because the Kingdom of God is not reigning here and now.  Can you imagine a world free of offenses?  Wouldn’t that be Heaven here and now?

If a single offense can be responsible for so much damage, what is the picture like when all the offenses going on at the same time get totaled up and the pain recognized and understood?  How do you total up the full cost for all involved?  What does this look like from God’s point of view?  This is why God’s love and grace proffer forgiveness: unconditional and complete forgiveness.  He knows us; He understands our true need.  He knows we are all lost – and all is lost – apart from that forgiveness.  And Jesus Christ is the only One who can deal with that need.

What are the lessons to be learned in this?  First, each and every offense has to be seen for what it is and dealt with in His love and grace for we cannot stand alienation and brokenness.  Second, there is no healing apart from forgiveness and restoration.   Third, reconciliation is not going to happen unless we seek to live life the Jesus Way.  And fourth, no issue that separates us is worth sacrificing the relationship, for we have been called to love another as He loves us.  Love and forgiveness belong to the Kingdom.  They are God’s will for all of us.

When and where does the payment and interest end?  That is up to us.  God has provided His side of the equation in and through the Cross of His Son.  The rest is up to us.  He has provided the forgiveness process that can lead us to His wholeness, but He does not drag us into it over our kicking and screaming protests.  We have to recognize the truth: our relationship with Him depends on our relationship with those we offend and those who offend us.  That is what He reinforces with us whenever we pray the Prayer Jesus taught us.  Until then, the price goes on and on and on. To allow it to go on is to affront the Cross of Christ.

The Price of Not Forgiving is the Greatest Offense of All,

and Look What It Costs

When alienation is allowed to stand, the inner sacrifices are peace, self-esteem, a sense of well-being.  Wholeness is not present; brokenness is the result.  We are out of harmony with God, others, self, and life as God intends it to be lived.  No other relationship is as it needs to be for at heart we are alienated from God’s reality and peace.  We are more than out of sorts; we are in pain and every area of our being is tainted by its ugly presence.  We know full well we need to be reconciled, but, for what ever reason, we are willing to be alienated rather than reconciled.  Pogo got it right: “We have seen the enemy, and it is us!”

The price of forgiving and being reconciled is never what the price is for remaining in alienation.  Whatever it takes for us to enter into the forgiveness process is never as costly or as damaging as is remaining apart from it.  Hebrews tells the story of Esau wanting to repent and be forgiven, and he sought the place of repentance with tears, but since his heart was not in it, it never worked on his behalf.  Forgiveness is always a heart-matter, and the greatest price is paid when it is not sought with all one’s heart.

It is amazing the levels of pain some are willing to live with rather than to make things right and be at peace.  Alienation can last a life-time, if that is our choice.  We can nurse it day and night and build a life within the dungeon it represents.  But in doing so we have to remember the door to our personal dungeon is locked from the inside and we alone hold the key.  That is crazy-making you say.  You are right, but look how often it is practiced.

When reconciliation proves impossible to achieve, that may be due to another’s role in it, but when we are the ones doing it, how do we apologize to God for what we are doing to God, others who depend upon us, our True Selves, and the One who has commanded us to love as He loves us?  Such a deliberate sin of seeking revenge cannot be explained away.  Damning another is to damn ourselves.

Such actions on our part are reflective of what’s in us, and it isn’t good.  It is a cancer that if left untreated soon passes the point of no return.  God in His grace has not given up on us but it is obvious we have chosen to thumb our nose at such grace.  By the way, Esau did repent many years later, but he had to explain to God why it took so many wasted years and why he had not acted on God’s offer of grace decades before.  Tell me what you are waiting for, and why?

In Conclusion

Our actions are born out of our theology of relationships.  They tell who God is to us and what we think of others.   Negative acts are born out of negative thinking and relating.  Negative thinking and relating is the fruit of what’s inside us.  What has someone done to us that is greater than what we have done to God in costing Him His very own Son to atone for our offenses against Him?  No offender owes us as much as we ourselves owe Him.  In Matthew’s Gospel our final judgment is based on the totality of our relationships.  And Jesus points out very clearly and pointedly, what we have done to others is what we have done to Him.  He is their Lord also.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet

eauthelet@cox.net

Next Month

Part 7

DEALING WITH THE HURT/PAIN/ANGER/LOSS/AFTERMATH

]]> http://eauthelet.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/part-6-forgiveness-costs-and-look-who-pays/feed/ 0 eauthelet http://eauthelet.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/part-5-god-never-said-it-would-be-easy-but/ http://eauthelet.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/part-5-god-never-said-it-would-be-easy-but/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 18:23:28 +0000 eauthelet http://eauthelet.wordpress.com/?p=445 ]]>

It was 2:30 in the morning when Ruth was jarred awake by the ringing of her bedside phone. As she reached for it in the darkness, she knew instinctively good news does not normally come calling at 2:30 AM. Her first thoughts before finding the receiver were: Is it one of the kids or one of the grandkids in need? Or is it my husband, away on a business trip and due home later this morning? Or is it some drunk, fumbling his way home after the bar closed and can’t find his car keys? Hopefully, it’s a wrong number, and as unnerving as any call at such an hour, that was what she hoped for.

As she lifted the phone to her ear, her hurried “Hello” was met with a gruff, angry, male voice, curtly shouting into the other end of the connection, “Lady, would you mind keeping your husband away from my wife!” Now rudely and fully awake, Ruth spontaneously replied, “I’m sorry; you must have the wrong number.” Now, more annoyed than ever, the man retorted, “Is your name so-and-so?” Ruth replied, “Yes.” “Is your husband so and so?” “Well, yes,” she replied., “but…” and before she could say another word he broke in and laid it out for her: “Lady, I don’t have the wrong number…but it’s obvious you married one!” With that he slammed down the receiver, ending the connection, and leaving Ruth so far out on a limb she wouldn’t be able to crawl back to a safe place. Not now, anyway.

Ruth got up, put on her robe, and headed downstairs to the kitchen, with a horrible dread clamping its icy hands around her throat. He heart was pounding, her palms were getting wet, and what ever it was deep down inside her that cried to get out, she fought with all her inward strength to keep it from erupting. “Who was the caller?” “What about his accusation?” “How could something like this be happening?” She felt like she had awakened into a real life nightmare and at this hour of the night there was no one she could call. There was nothing else she could do right now but pray to a Lord who neither slumbers nor sleeps. Her gut-level reaction to the call was one of fear and dread, for he knew their names and that set her deepest fears churning. What was going on?

She made a pot of coffee, sat down with her Bible, and cried her prayer with more questions than answers. So she wept, prayed, read God’s promises, and repeated this cycle over and over until the break of day. It was five hours of gut-wrenching anguish. She needed to talk with her husband before calling anyone else. At the same time she knew they had drifted apart in recent years, but her husband was an active Christian. How could anything like this be happening?

Around 7:30 she heard the garage door go up and soon the back door opened and her husband was home. One look at her told him something was wrong. To his “What’s wrong?” she could only reply with a new flood of tears. Finally she could get out the details of the call. As he sat down at the table with her, he first apologized for the call but there was something he needed to tell her and this was as good a time as any.

For the past twelve years of their thirty-seven year marriage, there had been others in his life, and this time it was serious. He planned to divorce Ruth and soon after marry his present girlfriend. To say the least, Ruth was absolutely devastated. Although for several years they had lived pretty much as “married singles” – he with his work, she with her volunteering and church activities – she had just chalked it up to getting older, the empty nest, his preoccupation with the business, and her not adjusting well to so much time home alone. But for twelve years? Did any of the kids know or even suspect? Did his business partners know what had been going on? How had she been so blind?

Not only did he divorce Ruth and marry his sweetheart, but he and his bride bought the house two doors down and across the street from Ruth. Every day as Ruth stood at her kitchen sink she could see them leaving and returning as if nothing in the whole world was wrong. And inside, Ruth was fighting just to keep sane and to put one foot in front of the other. She knew in her heart her own well-being depended on being able to forgive him and let it go if she was to survive. But how do you do that? How do you let go of something that stares you right in the face day in and day out? She knew full well what Jesus did with those who crucified Him, but she also knew she wasn’t Jesus.

I want you to know, there is nothing in the Bible – the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament – that even hints that forgiveness is easy. It wasn’t for Jesus; it isn’t for us. It never has been; never will be. In fact, for many it is the hardest thing that has ever been accomplished. And no one knows this more than does God. That’s why He has chosen to partner with us in this process of forgiveness. He is able to forgive to the uttermost and His grace can bring us to where we need to be in handling what we need to do to regain our sense of balance in life.

The greater the offense, the deeper the struggle. The greater the pain and regret, the deeper the quagmire to be overcome. The greater the load, the deeper the need to turn it all over to Him and to put it into His grace-filled hands No, it isn’t easy. Sometimes we have to learn to give it to Him a hundred times a day, then maybe the next day only 99 times, and so it goes. But as long as we are still holding on to it and keep it around like some honored guest, our recovery and our wholeness is on hold. Recall the title at the beginning of this part: God Never Said It Would Be easy, But…. And that “but” is this: do or die. Remember, we cannot stand alienation. We must work the process or it will take over and control us.

Of course it is unfair. Why should the offended have to do so much in order to recover from what another has chosen to do to us? The answer to that is because we want and need to live, and we are responsible before God and others to live. So we decide – and it is a decision – to live! It is a conscious choice to get well and to live the life He offers us to the full. As author John Powell expresses it, we choose to become “fully human, fully alive!” No offender can be allowed to keep us from realizing that.

Working Through It to Wholeness

How Ruth worked through it is a story of God’s grace at work in a person who realized from the very beginning, this is too deep, too devastating, too critical to go it alone. First I need God’s help. Then I need my family’s help. I need my Pastor and Church Family’s help. And whatever else I need, I am going to find it because I want to heal and I don’t want this to ruin my
walk with Him or my family and friends. So she cried for help, and let others enter her pain and sense of loss with her. The danger here, because of a sense of shame and false pride is to hide it, hope it will go away, and not be willing to face it.

1. Family Support

Calling her kids was so hard to do, for the offender was her husband and their father. How would she approach them in ways that would assure her their help yet at the same time not lay everything on their father? She never asked them to take sides. She asked them to come to her aid and at the same time be available to their Dad as well. Divorce is a family affair. Her oldest daughter was close to her Dad, but at the same time she was a primary source of encouragement to Ruth. She needed to be able to talk things out with this daughter but not at the expense of the daughter’s relating to her Dad. The daughter’s husband was a Pastor and both of them were a special source for Ruth. But it had to be with an understanding that the parents both needed them. Like a typical, sensitive Mom, Ruth knew how hurtful this would be for all the kids, and the grandkids.

Helping them love their father would not be easy at this moment, but it would be a prime consideration for Ruth. It is what the kids needed, and Ruth would be aware of it continually. Not speaking against him for their sakes was the best way to go. Each would have their own thoughts. Her need was to keep things as positive as possible all around.

2. Pastor and Church Family Support

Gaining local support meant calling her Pastor and letting him know what was happening along with asking for his help and encouragement. His knowledge of her husband was scant, but he knew her well and knew of her involvement within the local Church as well as her wider ministry of Bible study leading and community involvement. Since the family business was located within the local community, news traveled fast and many were aware of the crisis that had exploded around Ruth and her marriage. At the pastor’s counsel she sought out a Family Therapist in a community close by, and set up regular sessions with the pastor as well. He would work with the Therapist in helping her and the family. Ruth remained active in worship, and women’s circle, and in her community Bible study group commitment, but not as leader. As hard as all this was for her, she knew she needed their support and did not isolate herself from what had been important to her historically. This was a wise move on her part.

3. Change of Location

At first she had not planned to leave the family home, but the conditions of the divorce placed a heavy load on her to buy out his share if she were to remain there. The kids encouraged her to move and to downsize into something she could manage well on her own. Using her money from the home allowed her to buy a duplex that would be adequate for her and a source of income as well. The move also helped her heal since she was no longer seeing her Ex and his new wife two-doors down and across the street. Leaving the family home also brought her an additional emotional trauma to deal with, but she knew in her heart it was in her best interest. The encouragement of her kids helped ease the load.

4. Her Personal Walk with the Lord

The initial shock and emerging bitterness was impacting her walk with the Lord. She knew it had to be dealt with as she would learn to move on in her own life. She knew she needed to be able to put it into His hands, but that is no small task in light of such a betrayal. She had invested well in her marriage, even to overlooking obvious signs that her Ex was not and had not invested for some time. She excused this as she saw the business growing and gave him more and more freedom to do as he needed. But finding out he has used this for another purpose – one that undermined their marriage – brought her up short and left her embittered and resentful. He had taken advantage of her trusting. That she blamed on herself. The rest of it was his to struggle with. Now she wanted to maintain her walk with the Lord of her life, and she knew He was trustworthy.

Having gone down so deeply into the well of betrayal and loss, she was determined not to come up empty. And to assure this she needed to put it all into His hands and allow Him to be able to guide all her circumstances. Putting all of it into His hands and allowing it to remain there was no easy task. But each time she took it all back, she would go to Him again and give it over. In time she surrendered more willingly. Each time He took it back and assured her of His faithfulness and increased her sense of the gift of His peace.

5. Prayer

One of Ruth’s Spiritual Gifts was that of intercession, and as an Intercessor she had learned long ago to ask God to teach her to pray and also to seek His agenda when praying and not her own. As she prayed for others on a daily basis she learned also how to pray for her Ex that God may be allowed to have His way in his life as well as in hers. This surprised her at first, but then it spoke to her of how she herself was healing and getting beyond the original hurt and disbelief. It also reassured her she was praying for His will to be done in herself as well as in her praying for others. Her tears at the Throne of Grace were moving beyond her own pain and were far more for the pain of others and the loads they were forced to carry. Hers were growing lighter day by day and she knew this was because His grace was at work in ways she could not fathom. She could not, nor would not, rejoice in her circumstances; however, she would and did rejoice in the lessons learned and in a God who was so very gracious to her as His own. She felt as if she were the apple of His eye, and she was!

6. Honest Introspection

Seeking to understand her part in a failed marriage and broken family led her into an honest introspection that laid her life bare to the Spirit’s scrutiny. Her close friends and family also helped her look at things and shared their insights with her. She learned to accept her part in the marriage as well as to reaffirm her gifts and love. Hardest for her was to accept his dishonesty as his alone. It was too easy for her to put it all on herself, as if it were her failings that caused his distancing and deceit. Getting into a Divorce Recovery program at her Therapist’s insistence was key to her seeing his role in it as well as her own. She would deal with hers. It was up to him to deal with his. His attempts to justify his actions with his kids toward their Mom brought about an accountability he was not expecting from them. They would not take sides but at the same time they would not allow themselves to be manipulated by him against her. Mom did nothing to deserve his infidelity.

7. Allowing the Spirit to Control

In all of Ruth’s dealings with the Court and with her Attorney, she asked only for fairness to prevail. His attempts to deceive, to hide funds, and cheat her a second time, were left to the Court to decide. Her prayer was that the “Lord’s will might be done,” and in the end she felt it was as fair as any of the settlement was concerned. That is what she wanted for herself and the family. By allowing the Spirit to work with her Ex and all the circumstances involved, Ruth could sleep at night, look her family in the eye, and reveal her heart to all those who were caring about her and for her. Her Pastor and Church Family saw God’s grace at work in her. This made her a winner in their eyes.

8. Doing Her Grief Work

In dealing with a divorce there is never an end to the grief work involved. It does get easier and things do get better, but it is ever-present. It never goes away. The reminders are present for every holiday, every family gathering, every family event, every day of separation. Kids and grandkids have an on-going relationship with the Ex. Couples divorce, but families do not. At every family gathering someone is missing. Grandkids are spontaneous about their times and relationships. You hear about your Ex and his new wife. To the kids she is a name; to the grandkids she is an extra Grandmom. It’s hard for them to understand. It’s even harder for them to know what to say and what not to.

After a thirty-seven year marriage and family life something changes and the loss can be so far reaching it seems endless. In many ways it is. But you are in recovery. You are doing your grief work and seeking to move on. But what are you moving from and what are you moving into? Prayerfully dealing with a recovery is the key and allowing the Spirit to guide you in it brings you out on the other end a different person. Look at all that has been changed. But look also at the one you are becoming.

9. Building New Supportive Relationships

Since the Church where Ruth was a member did not have a Divorce Recovery Program, she, and a few other women in similar circumstances, requested the Pastor and leaders to consider one. In addition the Church also needed to establish an on-going Singles Group as well as one for those resingled by divorce and death of a spouse. Once established the groups will lead themselves as leaders emerge from within the Group. Ruth was asked to start and lead the Group for those experiencing divorce. As she reached out to others she found herself healing all the faster.

Those in the Group shared phone numbers and email addresses and stayed in contact in between sessions. Ruth made herself available for calls. Often these came at night when things close in on us. Those joining the Group were uplifted by the support and encouragement of the others, and many confessed it was a lifesaver for them, especially during the first few weeks into their divorce. They also prized the prayers and concerns expressed within the Group. Meeting with others on a similar journey took away a lot of the fears as well as the early feelings of uniqueness. Some were farther along than they and that gave them a sense of hope that they might make it, also.

10. Deciding to Forgive and Let Go

As Ruth progressed through her recovery and grief work, she knew she was coming to the place where either she had to forgive or else stay imprisoned in the self-constructed dungeon of regret and shame. God’s Spirit was challenging her to let it go. Her Therapist and Pastor worked with her as she worked toward letting go. It was not as hard as she once thought it would be to do this. All of her working toward this goal made it easier. Since she had no real contact with her Ex and he wasn’t interested in working on anything more from the past, she would work the process in her own heart and with her Lord. When she decided to let it go, there was a real sense of a load lifted, and inside light dawned as she was flooded with a sense of God’s grace at work.

It was that grace that allowed her to be able to let go. Beneath it was the realization she had injured God more than her Ex had injured her, yet God chose to forgive it all. In forgiving him she released him to the same grace that was operating in her life. He and God would have to take it from there. It was the best decision she had made since that morning in her kitchen when the bottom fell out of her life. She knew now she was going to live. It felt good.

11. Getting Back into Life

Now she was ready to resume some of her earlier activities. First was to resume teaching the Bible Class she had started years before. She had stepped aside until she was ready to go back to leading it. Although she had lost many of her former couple associations shared with her Ex, she was now ready to build new relationships and found it a natural to build with some of the women from the Divorce Recovery Group. Some couples find it hard to continue relating when a divorce has taken place, so they drift away. They don’t want to appear as having taken sides. So her new social circle was among birds of a feather.

Her personal journey was well-known within the Church Family and this gave her many opportunities to reach out to others. Some sought her out. Others were referred to her by the Pastor. She found herself so focused on the present the past was seeming to fade. But the past made her very conscious of the need for self-care. Her kids saw the changes in her and this allowed them to relax and trust Mom to work things out for herself.

12. Growing in Ways Never Thought Possible and Sharing Her Story

Ruth’s recovery did not leave her where she was before the crisis erupted, for as she looks back now she can see how she has grown. This should be true for every child of God. When we make the decision we are not going to come up empty, that signals the Spirit of God to have His way within us. And when that happens, things happen for God is able to work all things for the good. Our changes and growth are all works of grace. They take us to where we could never have gone on our own.

Ways in which we grow through this experience become obvious to us and to those who know us best. We mature; we grow up; we move on. What the experience has aroused within us are levels we never thought possible. While down and so introspective, all we could see is a downward spiral with no real bottom in sight. But then things began to change. What grabbed us and began moving us upward came from above. Before we realized it we passed where we were at the point of entering and now with new wings begin to climb ever higher. The new level achieved will be far removed from the old. We know we could never go back there again. Grace would never allow that to happen.

In Conclusion

We do not look back and thank God for the crisis that led us to this new growth, but we do thank God for the grace that caused the new growth to happen. He came to us in the depth of our need and stayed with us all the way to where we are now. This same Presence will grace every day we now have. We live it out as unto Him. At the same time we thank Him for the lessons learned along the way. This is how Ruth chose to live. This is why she shares her life-experiences with others facing similar crises.

She discovered in going through the process what works, what the foundation is, what needs to be avoided, needs to be affirmed, and what can be clung to, even in the deep of the night. In my journeying with her as her Pastor, it taught me about walking with another and the practical aspects of being involved in God’s process of forgiveness. The best teaching for us all comes through the sharing of that process. As for our congregation and leaders, she taught us all in ways she will never fathom. She lived her faith through it all, to the glory of God.

The elements that worked for Ruth can be guidelines for you, but what you will discover is that each step has its own rewards and challenges. What is reflected in all of them is an element of time and timing. None of it happened over night, and each element demanded its own timing. It cannot be rushed. As you progress through it you will know when to refocus and move into the next. Another element of the process is working one or two or three simultaneously. And as life teaches us, three-steps forward may lead to one or two back, then the need is to move forward all over again before achieving the next step. But you will be moving, and in the right direction. Let Christ be your Anchor. Let the Spirit be your Guide. And let the Father’s love be your Motivation. Let all who care about you be your Encouragers.

Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net

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FORGIVENESS COSTS AND LOOK WHO PAYS