I’ve traveled highway 45 between Houston and Dallas so many times that I know where things are by the mile markers along the way. My son still makes this journey often and when he calls me to tell me he is “going to Houston,” I always ask him what mile marker he just passed. Mile marker 178 is Buffalo, Texas and marker 118 is Huntsville. For me, I am in Houston when I hit mile marker 64.
Highways are not the only mile markers. Our spiritual lives have markers along the way. The presence or absence of these markers tells us where we are in the journey. If we do not see the marker of prayer in our life, we are not on the right spiritual track. Worship and giving are two more spiritual markers in our journey.
Forgiveness also has mile markers along the way. Jesus said, “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matt 6:14-15). If you want God to forgive you of your sins, you must forgive others when they hurt you. Presence or absence of my forgiveness of those who hurt me is a clear marker of God’s forgiveness of me.
Such a thought can be heavy on our hearts. In our desperation to have forgiveness, we make try to fake forgiveness for others. Fake forgiveness is saying we forgive, but not really forgiving. Listed below are four mile markers for real forgiveness. These markers all involve our prayers for the offending person (we’ll call him Bill). Obviously if you are not willing to pray for Bill, you have not truly forgiven him.
- The first prayer of forgiveness:
“Lord, please be with Bill and help him see how much he has hurt and wronged me.” - The second prayer of forgiveness:
“Lord, forgive Bill of his sin.” - The third prayer of forgiveness:
“Lord, bless Bill that the rest of his life will be better.” - The real prayer of forgiveness:
“Lord, I thank you for being with Bill. I am so happy that his life is blessed by you. Please continue to bless him.”
You know you have forgiven when you no longer pray for Bill to repent, but instead thank God for the blessings He has bestowed on Bill.
If you want to be forgiven, forgive. If you want to know if you have forgiven, pray. The tone of your prayer and the emotion in your heart will tell you where you are in your process of forgiveness.
Lonnie Davis
Usually when I get a phone call from a stranger who is asking spiritual questions it will end up with asking for money. I do not mean to sound cynical, but that is how things usually happen. Not this time. This time she started with question that I had difficulty understanding. She seemed incoherent and confused. She finally got to her real question, “How can a God who loves us allow such terrible things to happen in our lives?” Her question went way beyond this, but that was the heart of her question. She even quoted a Scripture, Jeremiah 29:11
“I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
After quoting the verse, she lamented her troubles. Homeless, abused, neglected and rejected, she questioned how she could possibly believe in a God who says He loves her and then allowed all of those circumstances.
She really did not want to listen to anything I had to say. She saw herself as a victim and just wanted to rant. I listened for a while, never learned her real story. She might really be a victim of many terrible events, but seeing oneself as a victim never leads to a solution. Here are the truths that lead to solutions:
- God is on your side.
- God does have wonderful plans for you.
- Whether you live in a mansion or a cardboard box. For those who love Him, God can give you a joyful ending. (See the story of Lazarus – Luke 16).
Like so many people, the lady on the phone had pulled out a part of a text and left the other unread. Listen to the rest of the verse that she quoted:
“‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord.” (vs 12-14)
It is not enough to just believe that He has great plans for us. We must read the rest of the story. We must call upon Him. We must seek Him with all our heart. Then, and only then, do we have the promise that we will find Him.
Lonnie Davis
Balcony People
It was in the 1970s that Baylor University in Waco, Texas hired a new football coach. They had a long history of failure. It seemed they could not win their conference or even really compete. Grant Teaff took over a team that had won less than two games a year for the previous five years. He hit town and so did the folks who were ready to tell him how to run things. The story goes that he listened to the critics and then told them that he did not respond to criticism and worked a lot better with encouragement. He was right and within two years he took that pitiful program and won the conference championship.
All of us work better with encouragement. I like to call them "the balcony people." At a successful Broadway play, when the play is over the balcony people stand and cheer. Everyone needs balcony people in their life. We need people who bless us and give us courage and encouragement.
We need our family to be our balcony people. They know our strengths and weaknesses. They can easily boo our flops, but we need them to clap at our successes. Knowing us as well as they do, surely they can find something to clap about.
We need our church family to be our balcony people. All week long we live in a world that is not friendly to our Christian values. When we walk through the church doors on Sunday morning we need to be lifted up. We need to leave with encouragement that will help us go back and face the world. When Paul wrote to his Christian family he almost always started with words of encouragement.
We need God to be in our balcony. Thankfully, He is always there for us. When God spoke to Jeremiah He promised him, "’I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 29:10-14). The promise God made to Jeremiah is a promise to us also. For us that promise is found in the words of Jesus, "I am with you always." (Matt 28:20).
Lonnie