Thoughts on Forgiveness and Living Like Jesus
Forgiveness is hard. I’m not going to pretend like it’s not. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever
done. However, I think it’s one of the
most rewarding gifts God gave us.
Since my dad died, I’ve pretty much
been a “you get one chance” kinda gal. I
never forgave people for the things they did to hurt me. I’d just leave them in my past, and not try
to reconcile anything with them. They
hurt me, so they were not good. Or, at
least, that’s what my young mind thought about it. I had enough pain in my life, so if I was
hurt any more, I just shut the person out, as a way to try to protect my heart.
Recently, I’ve been focusing so
much on forgiveness. I’m learning that it’s a choice, and I cannot allow it to
be caught up in my feelings. I might always
be hurt, but forgiveness doesn’t have to be about how I feel. I mess up every single day. I sin daily. But Christ still chooses to forgive me. He
died so that I could be forgiven. And if
I’m trying to learn to live like Jesus… how can I blatantly ignore forgiveness?
(It’s another basic part of my faith: In the Lord’s Prayer: “As we forgive
those who trespass against us.”)
Last year,
I wrote on here about my #metoo story. And
honestly, for the longest time, I didn’t know what to do about it. I knew he wasn’t a bad guy, but I couldn’t
find it in my heart to forgive him while I was in so much pain. But the more I’ve tried to mirror my heart to
be like Jesus, I couldn’t find a way not to forgive him. There’s this beautiful transition that is
happening in my life. I’m trying to see
people as creations of God. I’m trying
to look at their hearts – not their appearances or behaviors. I’ve never been a big person on appearances,
but behaviors? Yeah, I struggled with that.
And there are things that are tough to forgive. But God is so much bigger than anything that
has ever happened to any one person. So
I knew with God, I could forgive him.
And forgiveness is such a gift.
God has
given me the opportunity to be friends with him again. A person I cared a lot about, my pain had
been keeping us from communicating, but with God’s grace, I was able to forgive
him and actually see him again. I was
able to sit down and talk to him, and not cry or have terrible anxiety. That’s God, y’all. Without His grace, there’s no way I could’ve
done that. But I’m so grateful for this
gift of forgiveness. And the conversation
I had with him also reminded me a lot of what I’ve been doing myself: deconstructing
what I know about Jesus, God, the Spirit, and my faith: why do I believe what I
believe, and what do I need to work on?
As I go
forward into this year, I’m going to be more forgiving. This is my new goal. I’m going to be forgiving of those people I
have taken myself away from because they made a mistake. I’m going to be more forgiving of people’s
mistakes and try to form relationships with people without distancing myself
from them based on the things they do.
And I’m going to be more forgiving of myself, too.
I hold myself
to such an oddly high standard. 4.0. No
drinking. No skipping studying. Know the
most possible. Must write eloquently, no
matter what I’m writing about. Must
appear to be a Christian. Must do this,
don’t do this, no, no, no… But all this has done has set me apart from the
world. I used to think this was so
good. I thought, “Romans 12:2 says, ‘Do
not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind,’ so, I can’t conform to my culture.”
But as I
read through the Bible this summer, I found out just how faulty that is. Especially once I dug into the Gospels and
the rest of the New Testament. Jesus’s
first miracle was turning water into wine.
Jesus was called a “glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax
collectors and other sinners” (Matthew 11:19).
If my goal is to be like Jesus, I’ve been doing it wrong. Living like Jesus does not mean living a
secluded life without friends. Living
like Jesus, well… is different from how I have been living.
Jesus conformed a bit to His culture
and His times. Of course, He was set apart
from the world and didn’t completely conform to its pattern, but He did meet
people where they were. There’s the
beautiful story of Jesus meeting Zacchaeus in the Gospel of Luke where everyone
is shocked by Jesus being the guest of ‘such’ a sinner. But Jesus didn’t come to please people. He
came to meet with the sinners, and let them get to know Him. (Luke 5:32 NLT: “I
have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know
they are sinners and need to repent.”)
Jesus didn’t stop talking to people
because they did the “wrong” thing. When
people made mistakes, Jesus stood by them, forgave them, and I need to do the
same. Jesus didn’t avoid people because
He knew they did things that might not have been the best. He invited them into
His life. That didn’t mean He let those
sinners change Him, and He didn’t sin with them, but He loved them.
I need to live with more grace and
forgiveness.
So as I am
going through the things I believe and re-evaluating why I have such strong
convictions about such things, I ask you to pray for me. Pray that I might find wisdom in God’s truth –
not in the Christian culture we’ve created for ourselves that is sometimes so
far from the roots of Jesus. Jesus never
asked us to be judgmental, pious people – in fact, He pleaded for us to be
quite the opposite. As I learn to live
with more grace, please pray for God to help me to remember that I’m allowed to
live in that grace, too.
God Bless!
-
Han
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