What Evil Lurks

We once lived in a house with a mold problem. We aren’t sure when or how it started, and we didn’t notice at first. We were made aware of the problem when Andrea pulled a leather belt out from the back of the closet that contained more “culture” on it than on a liberal arts college campus. Further investigation revealed that the mold began in the HVAC system and had infected the duct work. For so long, an unseen hazard not only lurked, but grew surreptitiously throughout our house.

Like mold in a house, bitterness poses a hazard to our spiritual health as well. One may best describe bitterness as an unsettled anger and resentment over a past hurt or disappointment. This failure to forgive threatens our walk with God. Consider what the Word says:

See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. – Hebrews 12:15

Bitterness, like a root, begins unseen, and continues to seethe beneath the surface. But bitterness cannot stay hidden for long – it erupts like a volcano spewing boiling lava of resentment. Bitterness creates trouble for the one who harbors it.

First, bitterness affects our body. Studies link bitterness to increased heart trouble, high blood pressure, gastro-intestinal disorders, and sleep disorders, as well as a number of other physical maladies. Our minds control what happens in our bodies, and an unforgiving spirit keeps our nervous systems churning at an unhealthy rate.

Even more dangerously, bitterness affects our spirit. The clamor of a bitter memory drowns out the still small voice of God. The one harboring bitterness loses the ability to see life through the lens of God’s activity, but instead views all circumstances through the smoky filter of unforgiveness.

Also, bitterness affects our relationships – it “defiles many.” One person’s bitterness becomes another’s hurt when a bitter person carelessly slings the hot lava of resentment. I once heard a saying I have found to be true: “Hurt people hurt people.” A bitter person is negative, complaining, and argumentative; never a joy to be around, but rather a nuisance to be avoided.

So what can we do when forgiveness is difficult to demonstrate? In a recent sermon titled The Landmine of Unforgiveness, Dr. Charles Stanley reminds that while we may never be able to forget the hurt someone has done to us, it is necessary that we forgive the offense of the hurt. He mentions that the key lies in how we choose to remember the hurt. When a painful experience comes to mind, we can choose to revisit the hurt, or to continually forgive the offense.

Let me encourage you to do a bitterness audit of your life. Has someone caused you the kind of hurt that you enjoy revisiting? Have life’s disappointments created a scab that you cannot stop reopening? Acknowledge your hurts and their sources. Release your offenses and let God wash you clean. Sure, you may have to do it countless times for every offense, but the liberation and healing is worth it.

I Should Forgive My Algebra Teacher

I was pretty good in math as a kid. I was flash card champ in the 5^th grade – or something like that. I was really good at multiplication and addition and not quite as strong at division and subtraction. I was also good in grammar. I knew how to diagram sentences, and I could even locate Indirect Objects. Johnny gave Jill a brand new book. SEE! In a sense I guess you could say I was good with letters and numbers.

But I bailed out when algebra rolled around and they started putting letters with the numbers. I didn’t pursue too many algebra, trig, geometry, and calculus classes. I abandoned the numbers and set my course with the letters. I wish someone would have told me that bean counters and engineers make a more abundant living than talkers and writers.

A particular multiplication problem found in the Bible causes me great problems. Here it is:

Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. – Matthew 18:21-22

It’s not the math that trips me up – I know that 70x7=490. It’s not even the understanding and meaning that gives me fits – I know that Jesus is not limiting forgiveness to only 490 times, but instead he is speaking figuratively that there should be no end to our willingness to forgive a fellow believer. Where I have difficulty is in implementation. I don’t like to forgive.

Yet my reticence to forgive took on a new light to me recently when I offered an apology to a brother and asked him to forgive me. I had made an unintentional mistake and wanted to clear the air and move forward in our walk with God. But he did not accept my apology and I was withheld forgiveness.

That was a very strange feeling; I had never had that happen before. In the gazillion times in my life when I have apologized for something, I had previously received a gazillion graces. But not this time. Suddenly, I was able to feel the opposite emotion to the relief we all feel when another extends grace and forgives us, and this opposite emotion has made me more sensitive to the need to be forgiving of others – even to this one who refused to forgive me.

I need to forgive, if for no other reason than I too have been forgiven. Also, if I choose not to forgive, I cannot receive forgiveness. After all, in the model prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray that God would forgive us our debts AS we forgive our debtors. As. In like manner. To the same degree as. Tit for tat. If I want to receive grace, I should give grace.

So, what was meant to hurt me has actually helped instead. This experience of “anti-grace” or whatever you would call it, has helped me to see how liberating forgiveness is to both the giver and receiver. Today I choose to erase everyone’s spreadsheet. I forgive. Even if I am not forgiven by them.

“Oh to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be,

Let thy grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind my wondering heart to THEE,

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for THY courts above.”

The Early Bird gets the . . .

I love sunrises. Saturday I visited the scene of one of my favorite sunrise places. My grandmother was my favorite fishing buddy and in her hay day she taught me that the best fishing took place at sunrise. And she was right. We had a favorite pond to visit; it was called McCrary’s Pond. For several years now it has belonged to my uncle and aunt and it is still one of my favorite places. I still can envision sunrise fishing with Granny Rowland, telling stories, drowning worms, running from snakes, everything that serious fishermen do.

As I have gotten older, I have gained an even greater appreciation for sunrises because they represent a new slate of possibilities and opportunities. Regardless of what may have happened the day before, with each new sunrise we are given new life, a fresh start. Sunrises are filled with hope and promise.

As I prepared for our church’s Sunrise Service, I thought about those ladies who came to the tomb just before sunrise on the day Jesus rose again. Hope and promise are not words that would have described how they felt. The previous week had been a roller coaster of emotions that began with Jesus riding into town as people sang his praises. How excited they must have been that the new kingdom Jesus promised would finally be coming to fruition. But the last sixty hours sent their jubilation plunging to despair.

They watched in horror as Jesus was arrested, burned with indignation as he was falsely accused by the religious crowd and tried by a corrupt Roman prelate. They wept in bitter anguish as he was beaten and then crucified. With a numb and cold sense of shock they mechanically took care of his dead body, hurrying to be done before the Sabbath caught up with them. When the Sabbath was over, still dazed, hurt, and confused they anxiously came to the tomb to finish the burial preparations. Then all of a sudden they were greeted by an angel who told them:

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' " – Mark 16:6-7

Added to the spectrum of emotions was a glimmer of hope. Yes, he had promised he would come back to life, but could he really? Apparently he did! This sunrise brought hope and promise to those who had devoted their lives to Jesus. Finally their devotion was rewarded. Even Peter – who was last seen deny his association with Jesus, cursing him, and bitterly weeping over his failure – was singled out with a specific message of hope. All was forgiven, even his failure.

Sunrises remind me that even though I have been like Peter and failed, each new day, promises new mercies and a fresh, new start. This morning I woke up with a clean slate and will tomorrow as well. Jesus has provided me with a life full of meaning and promise. Do not let your failures cloud the sunrise in your life. Receive the mercy that each sunrise brings and allow Jesus to work his wonders in your life today.

Defragging Life

I have been “defragging” since hard drives were measure in kilobytes rather than gigabytes. The changes that you save to a file are often stored at a location on the hard disk that's different from the original file. Additional changes are saved to even more locations. Over time, both the file and the hard disk itself become fragmented, and your computer slows down as it has to look in many different places to open a file. (Yes, that definition comes straight from Windows Vista®). Defragging is a process the computer uses to consolidate fragmented files and rearrange data on the hard drive so that it is more easily and quickly accessed.

I can’t believe that I have been using this tool on my computers for years and failed to see its spiritual benefit as well. Let me explain. As we live life, we process a lot of “data” ourselves – experiences, emotions, stress, joys, sorrows, you name it – and our lives get increasingly complicated and cluttered. Every now and then we do well to free up some space in our hearts so that God can access us more quickly and efficiently. Allow me to suggest some defragmentation suggestions.

Acknowledge. We are good about minimizing, rationalizing, and denying our sins. We blame other people or our circumstances to justify behaviors and attitudes that we KNOW are sinful. We are encouraged to confess – which simply means to agree and acknowledge – our sins to God (1 John 1:9) to receive His forgiveness and to others (James 5:16) to receive their help in prayer and accountability. Once we shine the light of acknowledgement on what weighs us down whether it be a sin, a sorrow, a shame, or a fear, then we able to counter its darkness and deal with it in constructive ways.

Forgive. I just recently wrote two blogs about forgiveness – “The Cure” and “Why Bother” – so I will not add much to it now. Forgiveness is not pretending that a hurt never occurred, but rather it is a constant choice, when a hurtful situation is brought to our remembrance, to refuse to dwell on the pain the situation caused and instead dwell on the grace of God that enabled us to survive the situation. When we let go and release the obligations we hold on others, we significantly unclutter our lives emotionally.

Simplify. Life can be simplified when we determine who and what is most important in our lives and order our lives accordingly. Business and organizations are encouraged to have mission statements to help define their purpose and steer their course, but I wonder how many of us have a personal mission statement? I have three, each stemming from the Bible: one that guides me spiritually (Philippians 3:10-14), one that guides me in my family roles (Ephesians 5:25 and 6:4), and one that guides me as a pastor (Colossians 1:28-29). In his essay “The Tyranny of the Urgent,” Charles Hummel warns us that we often sacrifice the important on the altar of the urgent. We are so busy doing what others insist is urgent that we have little time or energy left for what and who we know to be important. A personal mission statement provides us a tool to help us discern the difference between urgent and important.

As you ask God to defragment your life, I am sure you will come up with other defragging processes. In fact, if you have any other suggestions leave a comment and share them with us. Life is getting too cluttered. It is imperative that we all take the time to defragment or else we will find ourselves sluggish and bound up in the junk of life.