8/21/2015
Forgiveness:
Some time recently I prayed directly to God for help learning how to truly forgive people. Some times, it is easy, especially if the infraction is small. “I forgive this idiot for completely disobeying the traffic law, passing on the right, and endangering our entire family, Amen…”. Well, not quite so easy, but you get my drift.
However, there are others, with whom forgiveness does not come easy at all. In fact, they’re very presence dregs up so much silt from the bottom of my murky heart that one could soul choke on it for days. And does.
I’ve done the typical: read verses on prayer, meditate on prayer, say I forgive them repeatedly in prayer, trying to claim it like it’s the truth that my heart just can’t quite get. It never quite sticks. How many times am I supposed to do this Jesus? “Seven times seventy…”, Jules (Matthew 18:21-22). And whenever a new slight or infraction occurs, it just re-dregs those same old wounds, and I am choked once again by the bitter roots that have accumulated. Not a pretty sight, indeed, nor very pleasant to be around (sorry James).
So in desperation, recently, I was like: God! Help me to understand and learn how to forgive the way you want me to! I don’t know how, and I need Your wisdom and understanding! How do I do it, God, and yet not be a doormat? Is it okay to not be a door mat? What about the condition of my heart? I don’t know how much to simply take, or how much more I can! Yes, I pretty much yelled it at God, in frustration.
Fast forward a few days, or weeks. I can’t really remember. And I’m behind on my daily Bible reading by 5 days, I discover this morning.
Behind or on time, I am discovering it’s all God’s perfect time.
On Monday, I was supposed to read Job 40, 41, & 42. So instead of doing everything else I was supposed to do this mid-morning, I read Monday’s reading, on Friday.
Job has always been challenging to read, because his friends do so much talking, and some of it sounds like it may be right, but most of what his “friends” say is not good at all. It’s so bad that the heading in Job 42 after Job’s very contrite confession, is “God Displeased with Job’s Friends”.
God was so displeased with their words that He says to one of Jobs’ friends “…wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has…”
Then God tells them to get some sacrifice’s ready, and take them to Job, and says JOB, “His servant” will pray for them, of all things. Now, if you are familiar with the story, Job’s friends were anything BUT friends, after the devil was able to sift through Job’s life and destroy all that was held dear by him.
After being challenged by Satan about Job’s worship of God being based on all the blessings’ he had received, God allowed Satan to destroy Job’s children, his possessions, and his physical health, to the point that even Job’s wife says to lay off his integrity and just curse God so he can go on and die. Job said “shall I take the good, and not the bad?” Job 2:10. And then Job commences still maintaining his integrity. That astounds me.
Job’s friends act as if there is just something Job is not telling them, and proceed to ruin Job’s days even more by speculating on what evil Job must have done to deserve God’s wrath. They are abominable. This is probably where the adage “with friends like these, who needs enemy?” comes from.
But here you have something very interesting, 7 verses from the end of the book, a verse that I hadn’t quite saw before: “The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the Lord increased all that Job had twofold”, right after Job 42:9, where it says “So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job.”
Like a ‘rhema’ moment, where the Holy Spirit in the Word just jumps off the page and smacks you, that verse struck me today. As far as slights and effrontery, Jobs’ friends rank pretty high on the crap-o-meter of sins.They dogged Job, after the death of his children, and insinuated all the tragedy in his life was due to his sin. But I want to focus on what happened to Job, after he prayed for his friends.
Job was no stranger to offering sacrifices for others. This man, Job, used to worry one of his children might sin while they were partying at each-other’s houses, and he would offer sacrifices, on behalf of his children, to God in case they flubbed. This man’s integrity is pretty deep, because after all the rot he put up with from his “friends”, he willingly prays for their forgiveness to God, and God forgives them and blesses Job.
What struck me, like a gentle prodding of the Spirit at that moment, is the question: when someone has injured me, can I forgive them in my heart, and turn around and pray on their behalf to God? Even pray to God for their forgiveness, like a Jesus moment “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do?” Luke 23:34. Would I rather be like the unmerciful servant, and continue to choke them in my mind, all the while choking myself on bitter roots? Or could I be like Job, and ultimately like Christ, releasing all these debtors, and forgiving those debtors as much as I want to be forgiven by God (Matthew 6:12)?
There was something deeply cathartic in the whole exchange at the end of Job, and it challenges and provokes me. I’m still chewing on that Heavenly manna.
God knows my desperate desire to have things make sense, especially when it comes to how to handle forgiveness. A lot doesn’t seem to make sense, and He knows my frailty, my raging, my fussing and cursing, over this. But He is faithful, to put up really great road signs along the way, answering my prayer, with a challenge to keep walking, deeper with Him as He uses His word, which is “a lamp for my feet, and a light for my path” Psalms 119:105.
