We have all needed to be forgiven at one time or another. It’s tempting at these times to think a simple “I’m sorry” will suffice. But when it comes to forgiveness “sorry” just doesn’t cut it. Although when we say sorry it may be heartfelt it does nothing to change us or our situation. It is when we recognize our fault and make an effort to change that we can receive real forgiveness.
This Sunday we continue with the theme of forgiveness. Our focus will be on forgiving others, especially in light of the forgiveness that we ourselves have received. In short it is easy to forgive our own mistakes while holding others who make the exact same mistakes to a higher standard. When we give people the same benefit of the doubt that we give ourselves we will find that forgiveness comes much more easily.
This Sunday we begin the Practicing Forgiveness programme with a question: “Why forgive?” Why should we forgive people who have hurt us? What is it about forgiveness that is so essential to spiritual life that all the major world religions teach about how important it is? And—most importantly—how do we do it? How do we grant and seek forgiveness in a genuine way? Come on Sunday as we begin to try to find answers to these important questions.
The world tells us that to be great we must be better than others. We must be stronger, richer, more skilled, and so on. If someone is ahead of us we are not, obviously, the best. The Lord redefines greatness. Greatness is not to excel others. Greatness is putting others first. Not only does putting others first make us great; it removes the competition. When we put others first we do not need to feel superior to anyone. We can be content that we have done our part to make the world a better place.
There’s a verse somewhere in the middle of Isaiah that says, “…you shall be collected, one by one….” Someone recently showed me this verse and pointed out that it has important implications for how we approach our relationships with other people and with the Lord.
Who does your life belong to? We know that at least some of it belongs to the Lord so we make an effort to give Him His due share. But what if all of your life, every last bit of it, belongs to the Lord? At first this might seem like a constraining idea. But in fact it can be freeing. We do not have to balance out what is mine and what is His; when we give it all to Him we free ourselves to live our best lives possible.
Practicing Forgiveness is a 5-week program that offers the chance to come together and focus on ways to learn to accept, forgive, and love each other. This is an opportunity to practice love, even when it’s not easy.
When we have made the Lord a priority and started to work on living better we often expect things to change dramatically. Sadly, that is not the case. Changes in our external lives are an important beginning but we will not see real change until the change happens in our hearts. When the children of Israel built a house for the Lord not just as a place of worship but also as a state of mind, then the Lord could begin to bless them again.
Starting on Tuesday, 30 January at 7pm (and for the following 3 Tuesday evenings) we’re going to be watching Dr. Gary Smalley’s “Hidden Keys to Loving Relationships” in the church hall. Each session is about an hour long and we’ll do 1 session a week for 4 weeks.
When the people obey the Lord and rebuild the house of the Lord it doesn’t meet their expectations of what it should be. The Lord’s response to them, through the prophet Haggai, can be very helpful for us when the results of our spiritual efforts aren’t quite what we think they should be.
