“Your life is a story.” I feel like the idea of “life story” has become very popular in our culture lately… I seem to run across the idea of “story” everywhere I turn.

I think that culture has latched onto it because it’s *true*… It resonates with us.

However, pop-culture maybe missing a major piece: our life as “story” necessitates an Author… and the Author has author-ity over the story and characters He is writing. Of course what I’m getting at is this: God, who is Elohim “Strong Creator”, is Author and Authority…

This also has the implication that your story is not yours only. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.  Therefore, if you know Jesus as Lord and Savior, YOU and your *life story* were bought at a price… Your story is not your own… it belongs to God, FOR the Kingdom of God and HIS glory.

This means that God not only authored YOU but wrote into your story all the particularities of the street you grew up on, your mother, your father… your childhood abuse… and all the trauma in your young life (although God is NOT the author of Sin- your sin or the sin done against you… this is a mystery, an apparent contradiction that is not explained)- And you have been finding ways of escape- But not through God your Savior.

Trauma and abuse is a part of *each person’s story*. You can’t live in a fallen world where sin and evil reign and be exempt. Evil doesn’t give free passes. Evil has worked to harm you and evil has worked *through you* to work harm in the lives of others.  I feel that often we want to leave the idea of “sin” and personally being a “sinner” as nebulous ideas that we accent to, because it’s essential to “being a Christian”. But have you really wrestled with the anger (hatred) and lust (adultery/ idolatry) in your life story? How did you as a young child metabolize the anger and lust of your primary caregivers? We can’t think that our parents were “sinners needing a Savior”, but that somehow their personal sin didn’t cause harm in our young hearts. Unless your parents were “pre-fall Adam and Eve” and your home was the “garden of Eden” your parents perpetrated harm in your life. The intricacies of that harm, how it became woven into your heart, mind and body, and how Evil came in and whispered lies that you hold so deeply as *truth* (about who you are, who your parents are, who God is etc), and also offered ways of escape and promises of life apart from God… are ALL *key* to your story.

Have you buried your story like the man in the parable of the talents??

 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, … so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ (Matthew 25)

Or have you brought your story into the light before God- for healing, for redemption- and for multiplication of God’s rescue in the lives of others?

You can stop pretending that this life is normal and good- it’s *not*. But you can bring Heaven to earth. Let your life shine- Christ IN you and through you- He is Savior, Redeemer, the One who frees captives, heals the lame, gives sight to the blind.

If you deny (oh you might have the correct “Sunday school answers”, but deny by the way you live or what you *don’t ever say*) that you were ever lost and needed a Savior, or broken, sick and lame, blind… bound as a slave in strong chains (even to your own self-righteousness, ie perception/mask of “goodness”)- then you are denying Jesus in your life- His rescue of you- you are burying your talent (ie gift of Salvation) at risk of being the modern day “church of Laodicea”:

‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷ For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. ¹⁹ Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. ²⁰ Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. ~ REVELATION 3

I hope you see here in the last verse of this passage, there is a *FEAST*… but this feast is only for beggars… and for the sick and broken made well through Christ.

If God is opening your eyes, maybe for the first time, that you are spiritually lost and broken and need rescue, then His invitation of “Come!!” is to you!!

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” ~ Mark 2:17

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ~ Luke 4

“Forgiveness is a war for your heart, for the person who has done you harm, and for the Gospel. Often forgiveness is messier than the original harm. Will you give it time?” (DA)

INTRO:

This my 3rd and final blog on Forgiveness! I’ll try to make it brief because I’ve covered a lot of ground already. This blog series has been a commentary on Dan Allender’s you-tube video: “Unpacking the Confusion of Forgiveness”. He offers a view of forgiveness that is a *journey* , NOT an event that is something we DO, and “boom” it’s over and we move on with life. (Jesus said to forgive 77 X 7- this indicates the on-going nature!!)

FIRST STEP:

The first step, (discussed in detail in my first blog), is “Naming the wound.” “You can’t forgive what you have not named. Most often the harm is far deeper that what you have allowed yourself to name. Will you face the harm done to your mind, body and heart?” (DA)

SECOND STEP:

The second step, is knowing and experiencing afresh God’s forgiveness toward you. Forgiveness is always a derivative gift. We can only forgive because we have been forgiven. We must see that *we* have an immeasurable, infinite debt that we owe to God for our sin against Him. This is a debt that we can never pay- it demands our eternal payment in an eternal hell. BUT, Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh come to Earth as a man, took our debt upon himself and paid it with HIS own death on the cross. In becoming our substitute, He allowed for our debt to be cancelled before God. For all those who accept this free gift of salvation, we stand as free and an innocent before God.

In forgiving another person, we are called to do what Jesus did for us. We are called to cancel the debt of another’s harm against us. And thus, to no longer seek to make them pay. In this sense, forgiveness is never a minimization of the harm done to us. It is never a “sweeping under the rug.” It is a full acknowledgement that the harm done to you was *great* and could never be paid back in 10,000 lifetimes, but as Jesus did, in a sense, you absorb the reality of the harm, and yet cancel the debt… proclaiming that this person no longer owes you.

THIRD STEP:

Now, we come to the third step. This is what Dan calls “Stepping into the war.” This is a war between Good and Evil… Wherever there has been harm, Evil will come into the picture to seduce your heart with bitterness, with accusations, with a sense of power that is almost impossible to give up. Will you wrestle with the part of your heart that doesn’t want to forgive? “You enjoy holding power, anger… you have become bitter, but it has been *full* for your heart… that is the problem.”

This step takes the nature of the Gospel a step further than “canceling the debt”… The Gospel is about joy, and life… and invitation to a *Feast*… Jesus not only cancels our debt of sin on the Cross, but he invites us into the Kingdom of God as brothers and sisters… God adopts us as sons and daughters into his family.

Taking this analogy to our own process of forgiveness, God is therefore calling us to a heart that wants to bless the one who harmed us. Dan describes the idea of “Turn the other cheek” as NOT passivity and NOT submission to abuse. It is a defiant stand against Evil. “It is as if you’re saying: You harmed me. You think you have power, but I’m not going to run from you…  you can see that your first efforts to control me didn’t work. I’m not going to fight or flee. I’ll stand now to serve you… which is to conquer you.”

Dan also clarifies this “blessing” and “serving” as not a “pleasant sweetness”… He uses a cancer analogy. When someone has cancer, the way to “bless” them is to *burn, poison, and cut them with knives” (aka radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery). Therefore, loving someone who has been abusive toward you means *not allowing the harm to continue*. You must be more MORE committed to *the person than to the relationship*. This means setting up boundaries that the person will likely experience as painful (and may include legal action.).

True love will never leave someone the same, unchanged. Loving someone *in truth* will either turn their hearts more toward hardness, self-defensive and self-righteousness, or it will soften their hearts toward repentance, grace, and God.

Addendum: (I posted this as a reply to a comment, but thought it deserved to be in the thick of the post!)

I was thinking more about how hard it really is to love someone in *truth*… I think we come up with all these reasons why it’s best to sweep things under the rug, “to keep the peace” (but like Jeremiah said, it’s the false prophets who declare “peace, peace when there is no peace”), but really it’s for our own benefit in the moment- to keep our anxiety and shame down… Oh anxiety is so powerful a controller in our lives!! But what really serves the other person is truth and the opportunity to repent and change for the better… I feel like so often we don’t give God the chance to work the unexpected in others.. Proverbs says that the “wounds of a friend” are good… but how often do we really wound each other for good? Are we then being “friends” as the Bible calls us to be?

FOR FURTHER READING:

Dan Allender’s book “Bold Love” is THE best book on Forgivenesss. The last section of the book details this “blessing”: “Loving an Evil Person: Siege Warfare”; “Loving a Fool: Guerilla Warfare”; “Loving a normal sinner: Athletic Competition”; and finally “Bold Love: A sword in the Heart of Death.” 

Below is an excerpt from an article in World Magazine, I think is very interesting, because it’s a topic I’ve never really heard discussed before. I found it quite shocking that in the early 1900s, more than 8000 poor white women were sterilized in an intentional government effort to wipe out a group of Americans. (below is the link to the full article)

Poor whites need Jesus and justice too

Religion | Evangelicals tend to focus on urban minorities instead of the largest percentage of Americans living under the poverty line

“If you want to hear crickets in a room full of educated, missionally minded, culture-shaping evangelicals, ask this question: “What are you doing to serve the needs of poor white people?”

A recent seminary graduate, who is white, asked me what he needed to do to prepare to plant a church in a small lower-class town that is 76 percent black and 21 percent white. He was rightly cautious after reading in Aliens in the Promised Land about Rev. Lance Lewis’ call for a moratorium on white evangelicals planting churches in black areas because of evangelicalism’s cultural obtuseness and patriarchal disposition toward ethnic minorities. Since most black communities in the South are already saturated with churches, I asked this young man why he was not interested in planting a church among the lower-class whites in his county. His response: “It had not occurred to me to plant a church among lower-class whites.”…

“Today it seems that “the least of these” includes more than 19 million poor whites who are just the wrong color for gospel ministry and mission. As educated evangelicals turn a blind eye to 41 percent of the nation’s poor, are they more driven by a white messianic narrative than by an indiscriminate love for neighbor?”

http://www.worldmag.com/2015/03/poor_whites_need_jesus_and_justice_too

Blog title comes from a book referenced in the article… “Not quite white: White trash and the boundaries of whiteness.” ~ Matt Wray

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ~ Colossians 3:13

This blog series is an exploration or dialogue considering Dan Allender’s video discussion on forgiveness in which he outlines 3 stages (video posted below): 1) Naming the Wound; 2) Remembering God’s Forgiveness toward you; 3) Stepping into the War.

The first element of forgiveness is “canceling the debt that is owed.” As discussed in the first blog, this involves facing the actual nature of the harm done to you (Naming the Wound). You must name your own heartache and your own anger. There is clearly pain involved. The person forgiving is absorbing the debt within themselves- there will be pain and suffering. Forgiveness is a courageous act along every step.

The second element is really an essential prerequisite of the first- it is the idea that *forgiving another is a derivative gift.”~ DA. In other words, you must BE forgiven… and know that it is of a *far greater debt*… in order to forgive another person *of a far lesser debt*.

Matthew 18:23-35
Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.
As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.
Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’
The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt…

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.

Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’

In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Dan Allender said, “I must see the harm done to me through the reality of what is in my own heart. That there is a *far greater* failure of love pervasively in my life, than what you have done to me.” (paraphrase)

In the story of Isaiah’s call, when he *sees* God and his holiness, he instantaneously falls face down to the floor and calls a *curse* upon himself- “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips.”

Have we been captured by our own uncleanness? … As Dan said, “You have to begin with at least some sense that you are capable of any and all sin…” (Romans 2:1 ~You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.)

Do you know the *anger* and *lust* of your own heart? (lust does not have be sexual in nature, but the idea that “I WILL get what I want”) … How well do you know your own failure of love?… not in generalities, not a nebulous concept… but can you name how you have *used* your own children? The ways you have brought shame into their lives? Your failure of honor and delight in your husband/wife?

It’s only in the backdrop of our own darkness that we can see the glory of Christ… the deeper black we know ourselves to be, the brighter we see Jesus to shine.

“It is not going be a rule or a principle that will get a person to the place where they can forgive.” (other pastor in video clip)

Simply telling someone “you have to forgive so-and-so or you’ll never have freedom in your life” will never be helpful. Please, let’s all embrace that idea… Telling someone they “ought” to feel some way- whether it be forgiveness, or desire, or thankful, or joyful… or to “move on” from their grief and just have more faith… will only produce guilt or resentment… those kind of statements will trigger the cortical brain, which has no power in these matters, except for a thought process of guilt.

Instead the *limbic* brain needs to be engaged… by attachment, which is another word for love… “It is the *kindness* of God that leads you to repentance.” (Romans 2) … “it is His *Love* that constrains us* (2 Corinthians 5:14)… and makes his commandments “not burdensome.”

We will never begin the pathway of forgiveness while we are in a state of self-righteousness… while we are the “Elder brother”… Before we can mirror the welcoming arms of the Father, we must first make the journey from the Elder brother that we naturally are, to be the “Prodigal son”… Only after we *know* the welcoming embrace of forgiveness, and feel it ourselves, can we offer it to another… There is a sense of unity for the prodigal son in the embrace of the Father.

But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. ~ Matthew 6:15

Again, this is not a statement of “Then TRY harder!!” It is an invitation to evaluate your own heart… If you cannot forgive another… then perhaps you have *never* made the journey of the Prodigal Son… or perhaps you need to make the journey again (every Christian needs to each day!). The Prodigal son WILL forgive (a journey of a life-time! 77X7 is an image of infinity)… the Elder brother *cannot*… It’s a matter of identity, not effort.

As I close, I want to emphasize again that forgiveness is not a “one time event” that we *do* and wash our hands … It IS a journey, a struggle… a *WAR*… As American Christians we tend to be so squeamish about “struggle”… We have this false notion that struggle = deficient faith… and “Strong faith”= joyful, peaceful, serene existence (as Kirk Cameron would say, that everyone can see the “Christian” twinkle in your eye!)… Scripture says, that it is the “Good” fight of faith…

*Authentic* faith IS always a Battle.

So please… No shame in the Battle… and please don’t shame your Christian brothers and sisters who are faithfully fighting. Instead, let iron sharpen iron, and we will all have longer, sharper swords!

In my previous blog, “Are you having fun yet?”, I outlined the journey of hope. Now i’d like to share with you my personal story.

Part 1: Hope

My journey of hope began when Ryan and I found out that I was pregnant with our second baby… and we were *so* excited to find out this baby was a girl!! I had so much fun looking at (and buying!) all the baby girl dresses, hair bows, and little hats. I worked so hard to get everything ready for her. I remember being 9 months pregnant and painstakingly cleaning out the car for her! We had her first little doll, tiny little newborn bonnet with flowers, and tiny little ivory shoes… her crib was all set up and ready with a pink sheet, her doll and little stuffed giraffe, just so perfect. I had started to pack my suitcase for the hospital, and I felt a little silly because I had more things packed for her than myself- I couldn’t decide what I wanted her to wear for newborn photos, or her little outfit to wear home… and i probably packed 10 or more headbands!

Then, on August 20th, at about 9:15 in the morning, the day before her scheduled C-section, our hope was shattered with the silence of the Doppler probe… At this point I wouldn’t say that my hope was shattered completely… If you read my writings soon after her death I was filled with a lot of hope, and thankfulness and faith. In the Lord’s mercy, He showed us His strong presence and goodness in those early days. He knew I wasn’t ready for the struggle. The Hope of our daughter,Tirzah was immediately replaced with Hope in God’s Redemption. So in a sense I jumped from “Shalom” or “Hope” straight to “Shalom/Hope Restored”… and for a time skipped the stages of the true shattering and seeking. (see https://delightofmylife.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/are-you-having-fun-yet/)

Part 2: Hope Shattered

Yet the struggle did come… in God’s good timing. I had created my own vision of what God would do with Tirzah’s death and resurrection. I think that expectation became the new basis for my hope. Sometime around Easter 2015 that vision crashed in on me… and there was a second shattering… I think because this shattering was in the context of loneliness, it was more profound and painful…  . In this isolation, the reality of death felt more raw… the despair so deep it took my breath away… it often felt like I was truly struggling to take one breath after another… I no longer had any taste for life. Did I “control hope by killing it”, in order to escape the pain and risk of hope? Perhaps.

Part 3: Hope Sought

Then as this disillusionment engulfed me, I became a “stranger”. I felt bitter… closed off to people. I suppose the isolation became a self-fulfilling prophecy as I responded with disassociation. During this time, I struggled… a lot with God. I don’t look at this time as any kind of departure from faith. It was like Jacob wrestling all night with Yahweh… and not letting go.

Honestly, I believe the “loosening” began when I read these notes in my old journal: “Things will come to the surface in the worst moments… things God wants me to begin to grapple with. Don’t panic over them (ie. these “dark” emotions” or flea from them), instead, explore them with curiosity, and ask “God, what do you want me to learn in this awful conflict? what do you want me to learn about myself and about You?”

When i read “don’t panic”, it was like a burden lifted from my shoulders and I realized that my feelings of anger and bitterness had in fact caused me a sort of spiritual panic… because “good Christians” don’t feel angry right?? I realized I was like a hamster running a race on a hamster-wheel, trying to just *get rid* of or *fix* these emotions ASAP so I could go back to feeling nice, calm, pleasant… (with maybe a bit of self-righteousness for my perceived niceness?)

In his book, The Cry of the Soul, Dr. Allender says,

“If we view difficult emotions as problems to be solved, we will end up looking for answers that will work rather than pursuing a relationship with God… Rather than focusing on trying to change our emotions, we are wiser first to listen to them. They are a voice that can tell us how we are dealing with a fallen world, hurtful people, and a quizzical God who seldom seems to be or do what we expect of Him. Although emotions are generally aroused in a human context, they *always* reveal something about how are dealing with God.

The revelation of reality- outside of us and within us- opens the door to wrestling with God. Encounter with God not only changes our emotions; more importantly, it has the potential to change our hearts.”

Part 4: Hope Restored/ True Hope

For me, wrestling with God meant taking off the mask and breaking allegiance with darkness (ANY area of your heart where contempt has taken root, *EVEN* self-contempt is an agreement with Evil) … Other-centered bitterness had become a mask over my real conflicts… questions we ought never to utter… in the depths of my heart I had begun to question God’s goodness… WHY, oh why did He take Tirzah from us?… Why haven’t we seen the miraculous turning to God in people’s lives that would have in some way validated her death in our eyes?… Why haven’t we had the comfort from community we desired?… God, don’t you see us, don’t you hear us… are you now powerless to ACT?

In Cry of the Soul, Dan says: “We are radically disposed to idolatry, illusion-making, and attempts to secure our lives without bowing before God. Our core problem is not lack of information- it is flight and rebellion.”

Therefore, repentance and surrender before God meant a surrender to honesty with God.

In answer to my honesty, I can’t say that God answered any of my “Why’s???”

But He opened my eyes to see His arms open to me as a Father (they never cease to be open)… revealing His goodness, and tender compassion. And he said, “I *SEE* you… I *Hear* you… and I *accept* you… Your acceptance before me was never based on you being “good”, or “nice” or your day to day performance… I have set my love upon you irrespective of “good” or “evil”, and long ago I covered over all your sins, shame, imperfections with the blood of my Son… You shall *always* know only my goodness…. i have said, (Isaiah 3:10) “Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them.”… And it SHALL be well with you… don’t forget this righteousness is NOT your own… it doesn’t depend on your efforts… Everything I have required from you, I have GIVEN to you through my Son… His perfection, His righteousness is credited to you… Come, rest in me… find rest for you soul.”