Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Thursday 10/21/2010)

So Easy…

Luke 6:36-37 (Amplified Bible)

³⁶So be merciful (sympathetic, tender, responsive, and compassionate) even as your Father is [all these]. ³⁷Judge not [neither pronouncing judgment nor subjecting to censure], and you will not be judged; do not condemn and pronounce guilty, and you will not be condemned and pronounced guilty; acquit and forgive and release (give up resentment, let it drop), and you will be acquitted and forgiven and released.

As I sat in Bible study tonight listening intently because the message was definitely life changing one thing that was said caused me to have a flashback of my life. The comment was, “it is so easy for us to ask for forgiveness and then for us not to forgive.” I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, not because (for once) I was guilty of this infraction, but because this had been something I had lived under and lived through quite a few times in my life for one reason or another at the hands of others. The one thing that I asked God for when I gave my life back to Him after suffering a stroke at age 28 was that my heart be tender towards him and that hard part of me would be removed and replaced with a sensitive heart. God was faithful. I became an individual that whenever I faltered I found it hard to stay in a place of sin, or in a place of continually making a mistake, and with a repented heart and tear stain face I would find myself in the floor crying out to God for forgiveness. I became like the prophet Jeremiah, a weeping prophet, one who cried before the Lord. But with this I received a special anointing to forgive. I have forgiven some of what people have said are some of the most unthinkable or hard to forgive infractions. But I have found with this new life and this new found heart that although I am able to forgive and move on quickly, I am rarely afforded the same courtesy, when I do make a mistake. I have found that forgiveness has often been far from me, and that my infraction no matter what the size was held over me, I was reminded of it, or it was used to justified treatment or behaviors that were less than deserving.

It is funny for years I had asked the question how could it be that people could be quick to run to God and expect His power of forgiveness to reign over their lives, but they were less than willing or in total opposition to give the same attribute they expected from God, forgiveness. My answer came tonight. It is because humility and compassion are lacking. When we forget where we came from and how much God has saved us from, and still will probably need to save and forgive us from, it is easy for us to be pious, and to pick and choose when we forgive, and when we don’t. We forget that Christ was compassionate and that calling ourselves Christian means exhibiting Christ like behaviors, attitudes, characteristics and traits. It means extending the things to others, (even when they wrong us) the same things that we understand (because of our true nature) that we will need from God. In those moments as we are standing in judgment of others, that there will come a day or there has been a day that our infraction was worse than what has been done to us. I guess the question we forget to ask ourselves when people make mistakes that cause them to need forgiveness is, how would we want God to treat us, when we do the same, less or worse? Would we want God to be quick to give us forgiveness or would we want Him to inflict upon us the same treatment we have inflicted on others?

It is time to evaluate how much of Christ we are exhibiting when people need our forgiveness, and what is our expectation from God when we need forgiveness? Is it easy to ask for forgiveness than it is to forgive? If it is you can expect what you sow, to become what you reap, and that when you are in need, you may not receive what you need because of what you have given. Remember the parable of the servant who was forgiven a debt by the master and then he went and had someone who could not pay a debt owed to him thrown in jail. The same punishments and attitude he exhibited was then done to him, when the Master became aware and the fate he sought to bestow upon the one that owed him the debt ended up being his fate with some extra, tacked in for what the Bible refers to as his wickedness. So be mindful, before you are quick to be unforgiving and lacking compassion, for it may be the thing that you need most from God and others one day!