Are you imitating God in the area of forgiveness?

 7 Mar 26

Today's devotional: taken from YouVersion, Devotions on F.I.R.E. Year One

Readings:

Deuteronomy 3

Deuteronomy 4

Mark 11:20-33

As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12). 

Are you imitating God in the area of forgiveness?

Jesus explains that we can have a roadblock inhibiting our prayers. He states, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). Our Lord took upon Himself the sin of the world (John 1:29). Since He has made a provision for all people to have forgiveness of sin, we should forgive others their trespasses. What is the consequence for not forgiving others? Jesus teaches, “But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark 11:26). Paul sums up this teaching beautifully. “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). 

Employment Point: Forgive others their trespasses and have an open pathway to God.

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Reflections

Forgiveness has always been a big thing in the life of a believer. We are taught to forgive as our Father in heaven forgives us. We are taught to love, as He first loved us.

However, forgiveness in His teachings are also part of a tall order. Not like it is impossible to do but it definitely takes time to do. Forgiveness for a friend may be easy. But forgiveness for someone who has hurt us, who kind of destroys us in our lives, etc., those are the kind that are the calling from God. 

If we do or act like the world does, we hold a lot of bitterness in us. Things we do not want to rake up because it brings with it a lot of dusts, bad emotions often accompanies it. However, if we never deal with it, it remains part of us and becomes one of our hurts, causing it to become a stronghold. This stronghold will eventually start building up and becomes a wall that prevents us from growing in Christ.

Christ teaches us to fully surrender. To give Him everything and it includes every part of all these things we never want to surface. But it is when we allow it to surface and deal with it, that healing can begin. It will take time but the Lord has promised that He walks with us. He wants us to forgive, eventually liberating ourselves from unforgiveness, bitterness and latent emotions. He wants us to experience joy to the fullest, without any inhabitations. 

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Undaunted Radiance

BY OSWALD CHAMBERS

March 07

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. — Romans 8:37

In all these things . . .” Paul is speaking here of things that might seem likely to separate the sanctified soul from the love of God. But the remarkable thing is that nothing can separate the two. Certain things can and do come between God and our devotional practices or private life with him. But nothing can separate the sanctified soul from his love.

The bedrock of Christian faith is the unearned, fathomless marvel of the love of God displayed on the cross, a love we never can and never will deserve. Paul says that this is the reason we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us.” We are super-victors through Christ, and the joy we take in this fact is directly related to the magnitude of the challenges we face.

The wave that distresses the new swimmer gives the seasoned surfer the extreme joy of riding clean through it. For the sanctified soul, tribulation, distress, and persecution are not things to fight or fear or avoid: they are sources of jubilation. In them, we are more than conquerors through Christ—not in spite of them but in the middle of them. If certain things didn ’t seem likely to overwhelm us, we wouldn’t fully appreciate Christ ’s victory. We know the joy of the Lord not in spite of hardship but because of it. “In all our troubles my joy knows no bounds,” Paul says (2 Corinthians 7:4).

Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing. It is built on the love of God, which nothing can alter. The experiences of life, however terrible or monotonous, are powerless to touch it.

Deuteronomy 3-4; Mark 10:32-52

WISDOM FROM OSWALD

Civilization is based on principles which imply that the passing moment is permanent. The only permanent thing is God, and if I put anything else as permanent, I become atheistic. I must build only on God (John 14:6).

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Reflections

I do agree that tribulations and challenges do bring us closer to the Lord. It comes from a place where we feel so lost, so worn out, totally helpless and to the point we are almost breathless. It felt like we are drowning and will grab onto any helplines that we can find. And it is usually at this stage we experience God the most.

I find myself reflecting back when someone said to pray for tribulations. My first reaction was shock but after a while, I think it also made sense. Because very humanly, we have the tendency to do things our way, stand on our own strength and depend only on ourselves and trusting no one. But the Lord teaches us to do things differently. He wants us to surrender, let Him and let be. To give up control so we eventually end up gaining freedom and lightness in our hearts. Because when we surrender, it is no longer up to us but up to Him. We let His will be done and we just flow with the situations. 

I find the releasing of such powers to Him meant letting Him take the lead. I no longer have to strive or do much. All I have to do is to trust and obey. What He say, I do. If He never say, we don’t do anything.

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Lent devotion Day 18/53

taken from YouVersion, Lent for Everyone

Lent for Everyone is a devotional created and written by N.T. (Tom) Wright. For each day of Lent, there is a reading chosen from the Gospel of Matthew, plus a reflection by Wright. These readings have grown out of a project encouraging Lent reading in Northern England. This is the second in a three-volume series based on the Revised Common Lectionary of the Church of England.

Today’s reading:

Matthew 13

WEEK 2: SATURDAY

'An earthly story with a heavenly meaning.' I used to think that that old Sunday-school definition of a parable was a harmless comment. I now think it's more likely to be dangerous nonsense. Jesus didn't tell parables to provide friendly little illustrations of abstract theology. He told parables because what he was doing was so different, so explosive, and so dangerous, that the only way he could talk about it was to use stories. These are earthly, and sometimes heavenly, stories with an emphatically earthly meaning. They explain the full meaning not of distant timeless truths, but of what Jesus was up to then and there. This is what is going on, they say, if only you had eyes to see. Or, indeed, as Jesus frequently says, ears to hear.

Jesus' parables invite the hearer to look at the world, and particularly to look at Jesus himself, in a whole new way. You can see the force of this if you imagine for a moment the standard objection to Jesus' announcement of God's kingdom, from that day to this. 'Of course God's kingdom hasn't come,' say the objectors (including many devout Jews, to this day). 'Read the newspapers! Look out of the window! If God's kingdom had really come, the world wouldn't still be in such a mess!'

And of course they are right — at one level. If 'God's kingdom coming on earth as in heaven' means the complete abolition of all evil, and ultimately of death itself, then of course it is not yet here. But — as Jesus insisted in the passage we looked at yesterday — if Jesus was indeed winning the victory over the oldest and deadliest enemy, liberating people who had been completely taken over by the forces and powers of darkness, and if he was doing so in the power of God's spirit, then God's sovereign, saving, healing power was indeed being let loose into the world in a new, unprecedented fashion. And the sharpest way of describing that was to say, 'then God's kingdom has come upon you'.

But another way of saying the same thing, more obliquely perhaps but ultimately more effectively, was to tell stories. Jesus told a great many, and lots of them were different ways of coming at the same point: that yes, the full victory, the final abolition of evil, still remained in the future, but no, that didn't mean that nothing was really happening, that God's kingdom wasn't really present in some way or other.

The stories that make this point most effectively include the two little parables in verses 31, 32 and 33. A grain of mustard seed is tiny. But when it grows, it turns into a large shrub, and the birds can nest in it. What is Jesus saying? 'Don't despise the small beginnings of the kingdom. What I (Jesus) am doing is planting seeds. They may not look much at the moment. But they're going to grow. And when they do, then you'll be surprised at the birds that come to roost.' Many people have detected here a reference to foreign nations coming to share in Israel's privileges.

The same point emerges from the parable of the yeast. I once had a breadmaking machine, and I never tired of the apparent miracle by which a tiny amount of yeast made the whole loaf rise. In the same way, the kingdom-work that Jesus is doing may be small and insignificant. In his whole life he can't have travelled more than a few hundred miles. He met a comparatively small number of people — though considerably more than an ordinary Galilean villager might expect to meet — and, so far as we know, never went and preached before kings or rulers. He wrote no book; television hadn't been invented, so he was never invited to appear on chat shows or I'm a Celebrity. And yet the yeast that he stirred into the loaf — the kingdom-work he did in a very short time in a very small place — has leavened the loaf of the whole world. Almost everybody now dates world history in relation to his birth. Even those who do their best to ignore his message still have to refer to him sooner or later. His way of love, forgiveness, humility and service has woven itself into the fabric of many societies, so that even where it's ignored people know that something happened in his life and death that changed the world. 

There is more. The yeast hasn't completed its work. The plant that has grown from the mustard seed has further still to go. That's why today's other pair of little parables still matter. The other main message of this chapter is that Jesus is looking for people to sign on, people who are prepared to take his kingdom-movement forward in their own day. Here the stories are about someone finding something of enormous value and selling everything they possess in order to buy it. This could be heard in a rather selfish fashion: if I give up everything else for Jesus I will have a wonderful spiritual life. That is no doubt true, but the kingdom of heaven is far, far more than 'me and my spiritual life' now and salvation in the end. The kingdom of heaven is about God's rule sweeping through the sad, decaying world we live in. That is a goal worth working for! That is a vocation to beat all others. Give up your other treasures, Jesus is saying, and buy this one. Give up the small collection of pearls which have meant so much to you. Here is the biggest, finest one you could ever imagine.

Jesus still holds out that clear, almost teasing invitation to us today. His kingdom is still growing, still meeting sharp opposition to be sure, but still making its way in the world. To be part of that work is the greatest privilege you could imagine.

TODAY

Lord Jesus, tell us again the story of your kingdom, and draw us to follow you, to find the treasure, to help in the work of making that kingdom grow.

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Let’s pray:

Father Lord, You know us best and You know the things or people or events which may have brought us hurts which we never want to remember. Help us Lord to find peace with You, to deal with such issues with You and grant us the revelation of the hidden issues in our hearts. Help us to forgive anyone whom we have trouble forgiving and cleanse our thoughts of the unholy things that we still holds in the back of our minds. Renew us Lord, as we forgive and thank You for the grace and mercy when we are still learning to forgive. In Jesus’s name. Amen 🙏🏻