So how do I get home? After I’ve spent too long stuck, wounded, and devastated in my bitterness and not being able to forgive one who has deeply hurt me?
This entire process is written down for us in chapter five of “The Cure”.
I only know it might be experienced something like this. One day, you’ll awaken, too tired, too weary, disgusted and shattered. Someone will say something that will trigger something. And suddenly you’ll be hit square in the face with this thought, as for the first time: “I’ve been going this alone. Somewhere back there, I stopped trusting that God could or would restore, defend, protect and fight for me. So, I went it alone. And I lost the tenderness of my relationship with God.”
And your only thought will be to run to Him. Then you discover before taking your first step that He long ago ran to you and has been standing beside you every single moment of this madness.
And you will become keenly aware of how ill you have grown. You will describe it accurately now. It is bitterness. You will confess this to your God, stumbling over yourself to get it all out. This suddenly will become more important than rehearsing again all the accusations of the wrong you have suffered.
Then you will admit to your God what you both know: you’ve played, in self-protective pride, the role of judge and jury against your offender…And it has been killing you.
Then you will choose to give it to Him. All of it. A moment before it would have been the most difficult thing in the world to do. But now, at this moment, seeing the endless love, sovereign ability and willingness of your God, it is the only thing you want to do in the world.
You trust. You place your fortunes, reputation and all sense of justice into His hands.
You trust that God is completely, absolutely for you. And that He will make no mistakes regarding you. And that you can now pour out every hurt, complaint, the continuing horrible consequences to your life-and leave it there with him. He is not playing you mocking you, making an example of you or any such lie. He is totally for you, with you, in you, over you, in the middle with you, carrying you, endlessly in love with you.
You are choosing in that moment to be done with carrying what you were never meant to carry. This is called forgiving the other-for your sake. It is between God and you. And it lets you only off the hook. In an instant it takes every one of those embedded barbs out of your heart. You are free.
Later, you may have the opportunity to go to that offender and seek their repentance so you can forgive them-for their sake.
How will know you actually did what we just spoke of? This: you’ll find yourself going to that person no longer to hear them say some magic words of groveling that would finally free you. No. You’ve already been freed. You’ll go to them as a freed lover, wanting their freedom.
And then you’ll walk into the rest of your life in great joy and purpose and peace…
And that moment will be as miraculous as any you’ll experience until you are home in the land where great pie is available 24-7.
It is available right now, right here, right where you are. If you look to your right, that’s Him. He’s been there all along. Off with you then. My work here is done. The two of you know how to take it from here.
John, one of the three amigos, part of the ever-growing tribe of grace…
Posted on
Thu, February 16, 2012
by John Lynch