My Eyes Are On You

I am still dealing with the swirling emotions inside related to a number of situations. But what I am aware of is that the real issue has little to do with the current situations and much more to do with deep, unresolved issues from long ago that still haunt me and dictate far too much of my current feelings and reactions.

Much of the information that I have been blessed with over the past years about healing of damaged emotions, freedom from internal embedded lies and the real truth about forgiveness and about God's feelings toward me are all coming into play in addressing my sensations of current re-ignition of old fires. But at the same time I am feeling somewhat a sense of confusion, or maybe more along the lines of a loss of perspective. I feel the increasing need for others to remind me of who I really am – except that I have serious doubts as to whether anyone really does know who I really am.

One thing that keeps coming back to my attention is the issue of forgiveness. As I was thinking about forgiveness a couple days ago in reference to my current repeated temptations to indulge in feelings of anger and bitterness toward those who are acting wickedly, the distinct realization came to me that forgiveness is very much like dying. The more that I sense the real truth about forgiveness the more it resembles in many respects a choice to die. I suspect that this is maybe why Jesus talked so much about dying to self if we ever want to enjoy real life as it was designed for us.

This also confirms for me that the typical notions about forgiveness are seriously off track. Most of peoples assumptions about forgiveness do not go anywhere near causing one to feel like they are dying. Many of them feel much more like engaging in a very long-term intense effort to suppress feelings of resentment, rage and desires for revenge. Because pseudo-forgiveness does not get rid of the original cause for the internal pain we suffer emotionally, we end up having to continue to deal with that pain over and over again and get very discouraged thinking that this whole notion of forgiveness may be just a mistaken idea that doesn't really change anything.

But I have been exposed to much clearer insights about the real truth of forgiveness that have caused me to shudder at its intensity to its similarity to death. Real forgiveness is far more sobering than the false concepts of forgiveness and makes a person reevaluate and take stock if they really want to do this or not. It forces a person to tally up the pros and cons of whether this is going to be worth the risk involved, whether this is going to produce a decent return on the investment made in ways that we often don't take into account.

This accounting and evaluation of whether real forgiveness is worth investing in will be heavily weighted and influenced by what we believe about the value and truthfulness of Jesus' assessments of the factors involved. If we come to decide that forgiveness is worth the high risk involved, it is only going to happen if we can come to believe that we can trust God's viewpoint about the risks and benefits that He says play into the decision long-term. Because in our own experience the benefits are sometimes not seen at all in some situations and are delayed uncomfortably in many others.

So it seems from this perspective that to take the risk of choosing to forgive someone that we first have to have a certain amount of trust in the integrity of the God who tells us that this is the only real option we have if we want to live in true freedom and enjoy life. Of course this is the same God who also tells us that if we want to save our life we have to be willing to let go of it; all those who try to keep their life will end up losing it. This all sort of has a similar ring to it as the issues I am starting to see in forgiveness.

I keep finding myself going back to the parable of the debtor in Matthew 18 where I learned the most stunning truth about forgiveness a number of years ago. I keep reflecting on the implications embedded in this story and consider how they relate to other stories by Jesus about forgiveness and related issues.

The original creditor in this story chose to forgive the astoundingly enormous debt by the first debtor – 150,000 years of normal wages! We tend to focus on the size of the debt as well as the cluelessness of the debtor to seemingly comprehend the gravity of his situation as demonstrated by his actions soon afterward. But I am drawn to consider the situation of the first person in this story, the master who forgave this enormous debt to start with because, it says, he had compassion.

It occurs to me that the loss that was incurred by the master is seldom very seriously considered in this story. We almost take for granted that it should have been somehow easy for him to just offer this forgiveness. Maybe we think that we was so incredibly rich that he might not really be affected by this write-off of this incredible debt. But that is not necessarily true. Because the size of this debt is so staggering, I think that we tend to gloss over the cost that was involved for the master to simply write it off and give up his right to collect on this debt.

It is this point right here where I am beginning to see the connection with death being closely linked with forgiveness. By relinquishing his right to collect on the debt, this master had to of experienced something very similar to death himself. If someone owed me that kind of money – well, I really can't even relate to how much money that really means. I guess this would somehow need to be put in a context that would make more sense emotionally to me.

This is the part of the story that I sense I must connect with for it to have its intended effect. Until I can begin to really sense and appreciate how much it really cost the master to forgive this level of debt that was legitimately owed to him, I cannot begin to really appreciate the intensity of that kind of forgiveness.

I suppose that the reason Jesus used this figure and put it into monetary language was to attempt to make it relevant so that we could begin to sense the value that God gave up in order to offer forgiveness to us. Saying that the debt was this size in terms of wages is trying to connect us to the fact that it is something extremely valuable involved here, something of unimaginable worth, something very costly to the original owner that had to be relinquished in exchange for settling the account that prevented these two people from being able to have a good relationship.

This master did not just temporarily suspend the debt for this debtor and then later re-institute it as most people assume when they read this story. There is not the slightest hint that the debt was ever re-imposed by the master. In fact, in the story it states very clearly twice that the debt was forgiven. This infers that the master had officially given up all rights permanently to ever collect on this debt again; he had literally died, so to speak, to his rights to collect or hold this account open against the debtor. This was an irreversible decision on his part but was taken by his own free choice with full knowledge of the enormous risk and loss that would be involved.

Compassion is the key element here that maybe lies at the root of part of my problem struggling with my own need to forgive. And I suspect that it also betrays the real reason that the debtor in this story seemed to have such a problem himself learning how to properly relate to those who were in debt to him. This element of compassion somehow baffles me and even frightens me in a way. I used to think that I had a lot of compassion inside of me, but now I sense that my compassion may actually be something else, more of a self-serving sympathy for only selected people whom I think may deserve getting a break from me. Or worse yet, it may be subconscious manipulative way for me to get others to appreciate and love me more.

The deeper I get into pondering this problem the more uneasy I am feeling. If what I am sensing is true, I am finding myself closer and closer to having to identify myself in this story with the ungrateful debtor who seemed unable to feel real compassion for those who owed him instead of being able to identify with the master who was able to so apparently quickly forgive a debt that I can't even wrap my mind around.

And that is really where I am starting to see that my own problem lies. I really am too much like the debtor who seemed clueless as to the enormity of his debt. Just like Simon at the feast where Mary anointed Jesus' feet, I find myself unable to see myself as the greater debtor weighted under an unthinkable debt toward God needing enormous amounts of forgiveness. To be really honest, I have never been able to identify very well with people who talk about our immense level of debt toward a God who provides us with life and blessings and grace all the time with very little in return. Yes, intellectually I can assent to that theory, but my heart does not buy into it yet. I really am an ungrateful debtor and I am getting more exposed as such all the time.

Maybe this is part of my rage problem. Oh no. Here we go on another discomforting insight that I wasn't expecting. It just became obvious to me that this debtor who was clueless about the size and impossibility of paying off his own debt displayed these very symptoms of rage and resentment against those who owed him. I suspect that these two things go together inseparably. My ignorance of just how much debt I owe is betrayed by how much struggle I find myself in trying to forgive someone else who has created a debt in me.

But I really don't see the answer for my problem very well yet. And that itself is quite frightening to me. I have always been amazed in this story of how this debtor could act so callously toward another person after just having such an enormous debt paid off from his account. But now I find myself in that very situation and am amazed at my own lack of ability to sense the same thing that I feel critical about in this debtor. That insight certainly doesn't leave me with warm fuzzies. That means that if I can't figure out how to have my perception changed about my own situation and whatever debt I have incurred that is so big, I am very likely to continue to live and relate to others the way this debtor did. And after reading the end of the story I really don't like that option in the least.

So far I can't detect any clues in this story as to how this ungrateful debtor was supposed to be able to change his perception of his own attitude and situation other than living under torture and in prison until he was willing to wake up to the option of freedom implied in the directions given to him near the end. But I really don't like that part of the story either, especially as I am seeing myself very much in his shoes right now. I don't know of anyone who thinks that being tortured in prison is something to look forward to. In fact, I rather suspect that this would only cause me to become even more angry, resentful and bitter. Given treatment like that I am afraid that I would melt into a ball of uncontrollable rage and hatred – which is generally the fuel that torturers love to feed off of and intensifies their delight. I really don't like where this story is taking me now.

I must find freedom from this rage and bitterness and hatred that is holding my soul hostage. It has affected me for most of my life, and even though it has not been very noticeable, at least not very often publicly, it has remained hidden deep in my subconscious memories and emotional psyche. I have felt its flames emerge at different times to torture me and cause me embarrassment occasionally and have had to be very careful to not burn others with its acid bitterness. But I am becoming increasingly aware of it over the past few days and sense that God is wanting to take me on a healing journey that is going to be way out of my comfort zone very soon.

I am not sure how to prepare myself for this trip. I have been feeding my mind with large doses of truth about God's love over the past few weeks and I wonder if that is not part of what is precipitating some of this happening right now. I wonder if I have been given enough soul training for the past few years that I am now prepared subconsciously to engage in an experience that will max out my ability to cope with old traumas so big that they will require a very large joy-bucket to handle them. Those familiar with some of the things I have been learning about the brain from James Wilder will know what this means.

Whatever is happening, I have to cling very hard to what I have been learning about the goodness and faithfulness of God to get through what I sense is starting to happen in my life. I am feeling more and more out of control and that is frightening to me. At the same time I almost feel a little sense of relief that maybe I am finally starting to really grow in some areas that have been deeply stuck nearly all of my life. One thing is very certain – I do not feel capable of facing this alone. I feel very inadequate to survive the trauma that I fear I am going to have to face as I experience eruptions from this deep cauldron deep in my psyche that has simmered for many years out of sight.

Part of my deep fears about this is that my reputation is likely to be seriously damaged at best. I am frightened at what people will think about me when they see feelings and attitudes and outbursts that are totally unlike anything they have ever seen before if they happen to occur during my healing process. I am also afraid that if this were to happen then God's reputation could be seriously damaged as well after all the things I have talked about. People may assume that I am supposed to be a demonstration of all the good things that I have been learning about what God is like. People might feel good reason to question whether God is really capable of changing a person who suddenly seems to be falling apart in the wrong directions as old garbage begins to spill out into the open. And even though that may or may not be part of what is seen in public, I suspect that at least part of this is going to be required for me to get the deep healing that must take place if I am to really move on from this wilderness I have been circling in for about forty years.

Now isn't that uncanny. I never thought of that before. I have spent very close to forty years stuck in this trap of internal, unresolved rage about things I have never even understood myself. Just like the children of Israel in the wilderness I have been learning and practicing and processing all sorts of things about truth and principles and experiences with God, but I still feel like I have not crossed over into a better land yet.

And maybe that is the best news about this that I have detected yet. Maybe God is about to show me a much better land flowing with good things that I have only hoped to imagine before. Maybe as I die to self and pass through a flooded obstacle, a river full of danger, hopelessness and fear, that through the miracle of God's providence and His resurrection power I may come out the other side to begin a life of miracles and conquests in which I can watch God knock down invincible walls of resistance and allow Him to drive out all the enemies in a land that He has promised for me.

I am choosing to trust Him in this. I really don't know how to progress from here. I do sense that I must make daily choices that will align me with His impressions about forgiveness to the best of my ability. He will have to provide the motivations, the feelings, the awareness of my enormous incurred debt with Him and the compassion that I need toward those who have incurred debt with me. He is the only source for all of these things that I so desperately need. So, like Jehoshaphat who was faced with overwhelming odds and very real threats to his very existence, I say with him – I don't know what to do but my eyes are on You.

Rage and Healing

I woke up before 3 A.M. this morning and couldn't go back to sleep for awhile because my brain wanted to think about the events happening currently in the life of someone I care about deeply. The amount of abuse and injustice that he has been suffering for nearly a year now has taken him close to the point of death until he felt he could take it no longer. As a result he felt compelled to cave in to the demands of the corrupt judges who were instigating and promoting his physical and psychological torture just so he could continue to have some semblance of life left.

As I have watched this situation intensify over the past few months I have repeatedly struggled with feelings of anger, resentment, rage and deep desires for revenge against the evil men and even women involved in this case. But at the same time I also felt strong warnings from the Holy Spirit in my mind reminding me of the consequences of indulging in those kinds of feelings and imaginations. There have been many times that I have simply had to force myself to stop thinking about it to avoid become overcome with rage and hatred that I knew would become a source of regret and weakness for me very quickly.

Over the past two weeks the persecution has intensified for my friend. Even though he had not even so much as had a trial and had been refused opportunity to even be heard properly in a court of so-called law, he was thrown into a cell designed for the most hardened and dangerous criminals without any spare clothes. He had been stripped of even the bare necessities that he have been able to acquire through his long stay in prison and was only able to grab his Bible before they put him into solitary confinement under the highest level of security. And this is a gentle man who was not long ago voted as the teacher of the year and nominated for the national title as well. Nothing has changed about him except that he found himself the object of focus by a system so full of corruption that it feels threatened by any revelations of truth.

While held in this new oppression for the past two weeks he was harshly interrogated at length even though he was not even accused of any crimes remotely related to such treatment. He was fed through a slot in the door as if he were a dangerous wild beast and was even being deprived of many things he needed to survive physically without the outright taking of his life by execution. And all of this is taking place in this land that we call free and just.

Because of all these prolonged and deliberate intense attacks on his life by people claiming to supposedly uphold and protect the freedoms of all Americans, he finally gave in yesterday to let them have whatever they wanted in a plea bargain arrangement. He realized that there was no hope of them ever facing the truth that he has been insisting on over the past year and that all they wanted to do was to protect their cover of deception keeping the truth about their own corruption from becoming public even if it might cost the life of an innocent man.

There is much more to this story that I don't even know about myself yet – the horrors of prison life, the screaming guards who insulted him daily at times about things totally out of his control, the nutritional starvation imposed on him, the psychological abuse focused on him to force compliance with their desires. I am afraid that if I knew too much about this case that it might be too overwhelming for me emotionally at this point. I am actually very thankful that God protects all of us from knowing most of the horrors that go on all the time around the world because none of us have the capacity to survive such awareness.

But that is not to say we are to ignore abuse of authority or open cruelty whenever we become aware of it. What I have been struggling with is to know just how God wants me to relate to such revelations. And one thing that I am becoming increasingly aware of is that this is forcing me to face some of my own deep triggers that are set off each time I hear more of the details about the horrors of injustice going on. Whenever I feel that deep anger welling up inside of me I realize that my real fight is to face my own rage from that deep reservoir inside of me that has not yet been properly drained and refilled with grace and truth.

I have become more aware of this hidden cesspool of rage over the past few years. One time I saw a picture in my imagination of my heart of where this was located inside of me. I saw a scene that looked like a peaceful lake with nice grassy lawns along its shore and tall trees here and there. The water looked clean and it all looked like a good place to swim and boat and have fun and picnic with no sign of danger anywhere obvious.

But leaking up from deep beneath the floor of that lake were occasional bubbles of methane gas that would sometimes break the surface of the water and give off a foul stench into the air. I began to realize that deep under the bottom of that lake there was a giant container like a heavily reinforced concrete bunker very full of resentment, anger, rage and unresolved issues from all of my past history. Much of it was siphoned into that bunker when I was young and being filled with hostility by the abuses and dysfunction of those around me. As I grew older I learned how to manage it more effectively and thus the reinforcement around the container to keep it from coming out into the open and destroying all my relationships.

But the problem has been all along that I did not learn the importance of getting healing for all of this garbage being compressed deep inside of me. The religion that I grew up with taught me to simply repress all the feelings that didn't line up properly with the appearance-oriented religion so popular among Christians. So, like most of those around me, I learned to stuff my anger, my hurts, my pain and all the other garbage created by life and people's treatment of me into this deep hole in the ground and then trying to make stronger and stronger lids to keep it all contained. I was learning to use ever stronger garbage compactors to hide my waste and pain instead of getting rid of it properly and sending it away to the real landfill.

But just like the problem in landfills that we can see all around this country, the results of concentrating garbage into an enclosed area underground always produces dangerous and flammable gases that can become a real hazard to health and public safety. The same is true in my emotional life. What I have been learning over recent years is that anything that I have not faced and dealt with honestly and openly in my emotions has never really gone away even though I may think it has because it is no longer in sight. All these things simply accumulate deep inside to become a source of confusion, of explosive triggers that can be set off causing eruptions that come as a total surprise to everyone including myself.

The problem is even worse however. That is because, unlike physical explosives, these hidden reservoirs of ignition are not really disarmed by repeated detonations. They remain just as potent as ever to be detonated again and again and may even become more potent with time until the root causes are exposed and the embedded false beliefs are replaced with grace and truth only found in the face of Jesus and the real truth about God.

Though I have learned these things in principle over the past few years, I am now finding myself more and more in positions of opportunity to put them into practice. And in fact I have been practicing on many triggers that have been eliminated over the years and have enjoyed a great deal more authentic peace than I ever had during the first half of my life. But now I am becoming more aware that the real big stuff, the really volatile stash may still be full of even more deadly caches of ammunition just waiting to go off if it is not dismantled very carefully by a trained and sincere expert.

I am becoming aware that the only real expert that I currently know of is the promptings of Jesus sent through His Spirit to speak to me and mentor me as to how to deal with these issues as they become exposed. At times I wish that I could also work to disarm these munition dumps with other experts who have been trained by Jesus to do this kind of work, but so far that has not been available to me. So I accept the fact that God is faithful enough to work with me directly and in the process may even be training me to be His assistant in possibly helping others to disarm their emotional ammunition dumps in the future.

As I faced these intense feelings stirring up from deep in my cesspool of old ammunition yesterday, and especially as I was thinking about it very early this morning once again as I lay in bed not being able to sleep, I was impressed that another important lesson of disarmament that I have learned was also needed to be effective in the current danger that I find myself in now. I became aware that not only do I have to face my anger squarely and look for its underlying triggers, but that one of the most effective methods of disarming this overwhelming rage that threatens to destroy me is to implement the principle of real forgiveness that I have also been learning over the past few years.

I have felt so enriched and blessed as I have been learning the real truth about what forgiveness really is recently. But that insight has continued to deepen each time that I revisit it, and this time is no exception. It seems that time after time God brings me into new situations and then reminds me of my lessons from the past that He has taught me separately and asks me to view the pieces put together in the present. And each time I get the distinct sensation that the puzzle picture just keeps getting clearer and more obvious. This is always a source of encouragement for me and causes me to want to know even more of the ways that God has designed reality and how to live in a way that causes me to thrive and live from my heart in peace and joy.

What I am becoming acutely aware of now is that I need to apply the principle of authentic forgiveness that I have learned alongside the principles of exposure and healing that I have also been learning in order to more effectively deal with my current exposure of this hidden rage. Anger is a warning that something else much deeper is lurking behind it that needs attention if I am to ever resolve the cause of that symptom. I have been learning to be more intentional and observant in discerning what might be hiding behind various emotions like anger and find out what it has been trying to mask for so long. There is almost always a different emotion hiding behind anger that is very fearful of exposure but that needs to be identified and dealt with directly before the anger trigger can ever be dissipated.

Over the past few years as I have sought to practice this new skill, I am finding that it is becoming easier to spot these hiding background emotions and coax them out into the open as long as I make my mind safe for them to disclose themselves. It is as if they are like little hurt children terrified of being abused or misunderstood yet again and simply need time and caring attention to make them feel safe enough to disclose their secret fears and feelings. As I cultivate an internal atmosphere of kindness, honesty and freedom from all condemnation in my own heart, these quivering “little people” inside of me feel more safe to come out of hiding and trust me with their secrets in hopes that they can be released from their cells and grow up into full maturity and wholeness like other parts of me have been able to do.

Many times these “little people” are living in very old memories from my past that are long forgotten by my conscious memory. But nevertheless they are just as real and powerful as the day that they were forced into their little prison cells by the legalistic guards of condemnation and false religion long ago.

Oh my! As I just wrote that last line it hit me very forcefully how close this analogy is to the situation that my friend has been experiencing over the past year. Maybe that is why this situation is stirring up so much intense feeling inside of me besides the fact of the obvious abuse he has been suffering. What I may be feeling is resonance with a lifetime of similar feelings but from very different sources. I do not imply in the slightest that what I have experienced could be anywhere near as traumatic as what he has gone through. But the resonance remains and serves as an opportunity for me to discover some hidden prison cells inside of myself that contain prisoners kept in darkness far too long just as he has been.

One reason that I did not get up early this morning and begin writing all of this down sooner as I often do is because I wanted to focus more on experiencing it at the heart level instead of capturing it with my left brain, as stimulating as that may be. I am trying to move more into learning how to apply the many things I have been learning about healing and wholeness to my own heart to have more balance in my own experience and also become more authentic. So I just laid there in bed and talked with God about what I was thinking and feeling and focused on practicing the kind of forgiveness that He was prompting me to do. I found that as I did the peace that had been lost began to return and to fill my heart once again.

The more I focused on intentional forgiveness and taking ownership of my bitterness and resentment, the more I felt in real time the presence and love of God coming back into my emotions and internal atmosphere. I realized in amazement that all of these theoretical things God has been teaching me recently really do work in real-life difficult situations if I am willing to humble myself and choose to practice them against my natural feelings and reactions. I also realized that I need to be consistent in keeping my mind focused on that path and not allowing myself to indulge in even little feelings of resentment or I may be jerked off the road to real freedom quite quickly and have to make my way back all over again.

I am beginning to experience the awareness of the difference between knowing how to come to healing and actually choosing to go into it myself. I suppose this is the process of de-hypocritizing my life if I can make up a word here. The more I choose to practice with my heart what I am learning in my left brain the more real these things will become inside of me. I am very aware of how easy it is to learn and learn and learn but to continue to avoid submitting to the needed repairs in ones own self. But I want to come closer to having authentic balance in my soul where my left brain knowledge library is used to assist my right brain real-time applications of the principles I have been so privileged to learn over recent years.

In this case I am faced with the need to directly focus my attention on the rage that I am tempted to feel toward this judge in particular who is so obviously despotic and cruel. I remind myself of the destructive effects that my own anger will have on me if I allow myself to indulge in desires of revenge against him. I am then reminded forcefully of how God feels toward everyone who has sinned against Him and how much grace and forgiveness He has already unconditionally provided for everyone whether they want it or not.

God reminded me of the study that I did for several months on the roots of bitterness. Part of that study included facing my need for taking very seriously the command to let go of my desires for vengeance. This time God also reminded me while I was facing that choice again that He has been showing me the importance and benefits of obeying that command. The more that I have learned about how God feels toward me and toward all sinners, the more acutely aware I become of the truth that God's ways are not my ways and that His methods for retribution are very foreign to the way most of us want to see it carried out.

Then, in case I still have doubts about the validity of viewing this evil person from heaven's perspective, God reminds me of the consequences of not choosing this path of receiving His attitude of unconditional forgiveness and compassion. From the parable of the debtor I am forcefully reminded that I will only put myself in the hands of torturers and will keep myself in prison if I think I can get away with remaining angry and bitter toward anyone who makes themselves an enemy of truth and right. This thinking is totally contrary to my natural assumptions and perceptions of the right way to relate to evil people, but it has been clearly shown me through many lessons and revelations from the Word of God for a number of years now. It is just that now I am faced more intensely with actually practicing it at the heart level and applying to myself all the things that God has been making clearer to my head over the past few years.

What amazes me is the sudden and unexpected new feelings and perceptions and thoughts that appear in my mind and heart after I choose to act on what I know is the right way to respond in spite of my human logic and feelings. The impossible begins to happen very suddenly inside of me and I actually find myself becoming free of the very animosity that so recently was tormenting my heart and keeping me in chains of bitterness and even rage at times. But these new feelings and impulses are like tender little plants showing up that I need to protect, nurture and cultivate if they are to have time to take deeper root and grow up into stronger maturity in my own life. I cannot just assume that because I am enjoying their sudden appearance right now that I am safe to relax. I find myself repeatedly needing to make the choice to let go of my right to justice and fairness and to take full ownership of my pain without indulging in cravings for revenge. Otherwise the enemy will have more access once again to my heart and will fill it very quickly with the old chains and lies that have keep me from thriving for most of my life.

God, I want to praise you for the incredible things you have been teaching me over the past few years. I want to praise you for your faithfulness and goodness and kindness that leads me to want to live your way instead of the familiar ways of revenge and retaliation. I thank you so much for how you have been leading me all of my life toward real freedom from fear, guilt, shame and especially condemnation. I still want to feel completely safe in your arms, but I also know that this is more about you than it is about me. I choose to believe that you are going to continue to do what you say you can do in my life.

Thank-you for your unconditional forgiveness, your unconditional love, your unconditional grace. Continue to live inside of me, to display your character through my life, to make me a successful experiment of your powerful grace to transform a legalistic, condemning religion addict into a loving, humble, trusting child learning to reflect your beauty. Father, I am so painfully aware of how very little of your beauty can yet be seen in my life. I claim your forgiveness and simply trust you to continue your work in me until I fully grow up into the likeness of Jesus your Son.

Confession or Faithfulness?

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 KJV) This verse is one of the most used references in my dialog with God. I memorized it as a young boy as part of my religious upbringing, but the significance of this passage has not really impacted me until the past few years as my understanding of how true religion really works has been coalescing in my mind and heart. I think the main reason that its importance has become so much more clear to me lately is because my perception about my relationship to God has so radically shifted in the past few years. It is certainly not because I think I am finally “arriving”, finally accomplishing what I was attempting to do throughout my early years of attempting to become “good” and trying to be obedient enough to appease God and those around me. Nor is it because I have finally amassed enough spiritual knowledge and experience or have gotten rid of enough sin in my life that I now can feel safe to confidently believe I am on my way to heaven. These were all unspoken goals that were assumed in my heart to be the way to live out religion when I was growing up. But these are also the main components of one version of counterfeit religion that has produced a huge crop of bitter, angry people who today reject God openly and are looking elsewhere for satisfaction and fulfillment. They are angry about the lost years that they spent growing up in a system that robbed them of joy and instead only offered impossible demands for perfection. They are resentful that the God they were taught about let them down and only seemed to provide lists of overly-strict rules to follow while their heart languished inside longing for someone to just care for their deepest needs and pains. I can identify with many of their frustrations and reasons for turning away from God altogether or seeking out alternative religious philosophies. But I chose a different path early on that has caused my life to go in a different direction from nearly all of my friends. I realized when I was a teenager that there was something inherently wrong with the religion of my culture and the legalism in which I was raised. One of my great temptations was to throw it all overboard and just go out and plunge into a life of open sin and self-indulgence so that I could return to God later as one of those people that had such glowing conversion stories that entertained us so much during testimony meetings. But something else inside warned me that making such a choice might well result in my never returning at all and only causing me to loose everything in the end. I had no guarantee that I would be able to repent at a later date and find what I was really longing for as a Christian. Something told me that Satan was sinister enough to allure me into indulging in a life of sin and then finishing me off before I would have a chance to return to God and find what I was looking for. After weighing the options many times I finally chose to take what looked to be the longest possible route to finding true religion, to finding out the real truth about God. I would choose to stay within the system reluctantly while trying to figure out what was wrong with it and seek to discover truth for myself in the meantime. During many years of living under the influences of the teachings of the fathers and traditional religion, this verse was not much of an encouragement for me. It was more along the lines of yet another demand or requirement of God that had to be satisfied before He would ever accept me or forgive me. It was this huge obstacle at the very beginning of this verse that tended to always stump me from finding much comfort or solace in the rest of the verse. It was the nearly impossible precondition that I seemed to run into everywhere I turned in religion that prevented me from ever finding assurance and peace with God. IF!!! IF I would confess my sins... IF I could just confess enough of my sins to please a very nit-picky, all-knowing God who could always find sins in me that I could not recall myself... IF I could just make myself feel sorry enough or grovel enough when I admitted my sins to God... IF I could even be capable enough mentally to dredge up every single unconfessed wrong act I might have ever committed at any time in my whole life, and then somehow do whatever it was that God demanded of me in some elusive act of repentance, confession and begging endlessly for Him to forgive me... The main focus of my life for many, many years was an attempt to figure out how to fulfill this enormous precondition to receiving the grace and forgiveness of God that my heart so longed for. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times a day I confessed sins over and over – even the same ones many times – I could never find peace inside of me. It always seemed to come down to a sensation that I could never quite achieve the perfect confession or figure out just what would satisfy God in repentance that would bring me the inner rest that I so desperately needed in my heart. So over time this verse lost much of my attention. Since it seemed impossible for me to meet its nearly impossible demand for my perfect confessions I gave up trying to follow this route to God and simply let this verse sink into the background for a number of years. Sometimes it would come up to haunt me again and I would wonder just what this text really meant, but mostly I just tried to live a good enough life to stay out of much trouble with God, try to get along with others as best I could and look reasonably good in the church. I became busy with raising a family and just trying to survive financially which I didn't do too well at either. Even in those arenas I found myself frustrated, angry and confused much of the time. It seemed that God was so out of touch with the problems of my life. At times He might throw a few crumbs of blessings or rescue me in desperate situations occasionally, but most of the time I felt somewhat on my own trying to figure out what was wrong with the religion that I had and why it didn't seem to work for me like it did for a few others who seemed to be close to God and happy as well. About twelve years ago God began to work in my mind and heart in a more direct way that I had ever encountered Him before. As I reread a book that had previously been nothing much more than a written description of the life of Christ, this time I sensed something very different going on in my heart as I read each day. I sensed an inner voice pointing out many inconsistencies between what I was reading and what I had grown up assuming about God from the teaching and examples of those around me. I began to see a Man who cared about people's hearts instead of making impossible demands and preconditions for coming to God. I began to feel stirrings of a deeply wounded heart beginning to wake up and ask disturbing questions about the religion of my childhood that almost no one seemed able to answer. I began to see myself in the stories of Jesus' interactions with people and was stunned at times to perceive that He usually treated them very differently than how I expected He would or that I had been treated by most religious people. Over time I was forced to make a conscious choice about the direction of my own spiritual life. I found myself confronted by the Holy Spirit to choose between staying in the comfort zone of my beliefs about God that I had assumed all of my life, or embracing the radical new truths about Him that I was beginning to see and feel whenever I read about the life of Jesus. The two belief systems were clearly incompatable with each other. I could either accept the offer of the Holy Spirit to retrain me and challenge everything I thought I knew about God or I could remain in my current belief system and not face my fear of change. The choice was up to me. I am glad that I chose to release my grip on the traditions of my past and gave God permission to reveal Himself to me in brand new ways that I had never allowed myself to consider before. But like the last time I faced a fork in my spiritual journey, I chose not to simply toss everything out immediately but to allow the Spirit to deal with each aspect of my old religion over time and open my mind and heart to the reality of what God was really like, replacing the false notions about Him that have kept me in discouragement and fear for nearly all of my life. This has been a very long and slow process for me, but it has also been very effective in building a stronger foundation for my spiritual experience as I have examined and revised one thing after another in my search for the real truth. What I have noticed maybe more than anything else in my pursuit of what is real and true is that the most important aspect that has to change is my feelings and beliefs about how God looks at me. This has been the core issue that has taken longer than anything else to change inside of me and continues to be challenged. But it has also been the basis by which I am coming to measure every other claim or assertion about what is true and real. As a result of my complete shift of emphasis about what is important in spirituality and in life altogether, I now have a completely different paradigm in place whenever I come back to look at anything I read in the Bible. Instead of starting with the assumption of a God who is looking for reasons to keep me out of heaven, I am now living in relationship with a God who is passionately devoted to doing everything possible to attract me into an intimacy with Him in every part of my life. He is working behind the scenes and through all the circumstances of my life to allure me into trusting Him more fully, urging me to let go of the lies about Him that have frightened me all of my life and to allow Him to have more access to the deep, wounded places of my fearful, timid, wounded heart. Now He is bringing me back to take another fresh look at this verse and show me the incredible power in it that I could never see before in this text. Now, instead of getting stumped at the supposed precondition of perfectly confessing every sin before God will accept or forgive me, I see that the focal point of this verse is really on the faithfulness and fairness of God. This verse is not about what I have to do to change God's mind about me but is a window through which I can glimpse a God who is eager to save and transform me if I will just give Him permission and believe in the truth of how He feels about me. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 NAS95) If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 NRSV)

Resistance and Forgiveness Revisited

I have been pondering the issue of resistance for quite some time and the effect that it has on our relationship with God. Ever since I started becoming aware of the truth about God's wrath it began to become increasingly obvious to me that the real problem is not God's lack of patience or His supposed anger but our resistance to His love and passion.

But this morning I became aware of another dimension to this problem of resistance. I was reading a story about a terrible injustice committed against a black person in South Africa years ago and how he later was able to engage in a life of compassion because of his choice to let go of his bitterness and forgive the one who had tortured him and ruined years of his life.

This is a typical story in many respects of things that go on in this world, at least the first part of the story is very typical. Injustice has become the norm in this world and true justice has almost become extinct. I myself am struggling right now to have a proper attitude about a very corrupt judge that is playing the system to unjustly keep a dear loved one of mine in an extremely abusive prison month after month without any trial or conviction. It is taking a heavy toll on the one receiving this abuse along with all who are close to him. And the greatest temptation for all of us is to give in to anger, bitterness, evil thoughts and desires for vengeance against the corrupt officials who so selfishly are abusing their positions of power and using people's lives like pawns to be played on with impunity.

But this is just the normal attitudes of the heart of flesh. And tragically the temptations that are assaulting each of us who are aware of this terrible situation of injustice is the intense attraction to become just as hateful, selfish and abusive as the corrupt people we are tempted to hate. My natural reactions of the flesh is to wish that I was in a position of power over them so that I could inflict at least as much pain and abuse on those judges, officers and wardens as what they are doing to my friend. But when I face those internal impulses honestly and confess them to God I have to admit that morally I am just as bankrupt as those that I desire to get revenge against.

So I am brought face to face repeatedly each time this situation stirs up my emotions, with my own very real need to receive and embrace the spirit that comes from Jesus, the spirit of complete and comprehensive forgiveness. Now I am not talking about the mistaken notions of forgiveness that most people have in their minds and that I grew up with and had until recently myself. I am talking about the true attitude of forgiveness that I have only learned about recently in the past few years that has challenged me to move far beyond my old habits and attitudes as a typical kind of generic Christian.

But it is precisely at this point that I am now becoming aware of one of the most important factors about this issue of resistance. For what I am now realizing is the true nature of those feelings that surge up in my mind when even the suggestion of forgiveness is presented under such obvious conditions of injustice as I am facing now and that millions face every day. Those feelings inside cause resentment at even the suggestion of relinquishing my rights or my independence and freedoms and are full of this very attitude of resistance.

The core ingredient that motivates most if not all of the sinful desires that surge around within me are driven by my resistance to the ways and will of God. When I face the convictions of the Word of God and the promptings of the Spirit to accept His grace and extend that same kind of grace to others, it is my resistance that causes me to even hesitate and struggle with turning in that direction. It is resistance that attempts to prevent me from accepting the invitation of Jesus to come to Him to receive rest and peace. It is resistance that causes me to rebel when someone tries to point out my faults. It is resistance that fuels my intense and fierce emotions and reactions whenever someone uses fear and intimidation to force me into compliance with their rules or their immediate control over my life. Nearly everywhere I look I am becoming aware that there is an element of resistance present to some degree or another.

Even as I write these things I am feeling that sense of mixed emotions that arouses intense questions and even confusion of identity in my own heart. I feel an urge to defend myself and to justify these desires. Part of me screams out for fairness and justice and to be treated right but at the same time another part of me warns that to demand my rights and crave revenge against those who treat me abusively plays into the deceptions of the flesh and actually moves me into becoming more and more like those whom I despise. And right at the center of that whole struggle is my inner core of intense resistance that appears to be working for my good while actually acting as a traitor to my own soul.

Resistance is possibly the main element within me that the Bible calls my sinful flesh. It is resistance to believing that God's ways are superior to my ways and is the only way that I can continue to enjoy real life. It is resistance that inverts sinful humanities perceptions of reality and causes us to believe the opposite of what God declares is real and for our best good. It is the spirit of resistance that was the original infection that poisoned the mind and heart of Lucifer and that he intentionally spread throughout the universe that started this whole messy situation of sin. And most importantly of all, it is resistance that will tragically produce the very fire that will ultimately bring the final end to sin forever.

So to bring it back to me personally and to get things into proper perspective, my resistance to forgiving those who mistreat me, abuse me, commit any amount of injustices against me or others whom I love is infusing me with lethal explosive ingredients that may detonate at any time whenever intense passion becomes present. It does not even have to be the final day of judgment when sin is forever exposed in the great explosive meltdown when it encounters the passion of God's perfect love. My resistance can produce the same kind of lethal effects internally on a smaller scale whenever it is expose to passion from other sources such as abusive authorities or religious fanatics or from any number of directions.

As I consider this it seems to be emerging that the lethal mixture here is something like nitro and glycerin getting together. It is also analogous to epoxy ingredients that create intense hardness after being combined. When resistance and passion are mingled in the same heart then the results are going to be a hardening of the heart and destructive heat that will destroy the soul.

Wow! I have never looked at it this way before, especially in relation to forgiveness. Of course, just because I now see this a little better does not mean that my flesh will cease to crave revenge or give up its practice of constant resistance. My sinful nature is unfixable and unchangeable. No amount of knowledge or truth will ever change the opinions and desires of my flesh. The only solution for dealing with this internal source of sin in my life is to continue to crucify it, to die daily as Paul talked about, to be crucified with Christ so that His life and Spirit can produce His fruit in my life by His resurrection power.

At this point all I can do is confess my sinful resistance that permeates nearly every part of my mind. I am frightened at how pervasive this dangerous influence is within my psyche, but I am starting to see the connections it has to what has happened to me many times in the past. I wish I could say I will just stop resisting and let God have His way in me from now on. And I can choose that direction consciously but I am all too aware that the fight is going to be much deeper than just a one-time conscious decision. If God does not keep daily working His miracle of transformation and grace in my heart there is no hope for me of becoming free of this fatal element.

God, deliver me from all my fears. And even more importantly, cleanse me of this terrible but most familiar attitude of resistance. Teach me and mentor me in Your ways and wash my inner parts with Your healing grace and Your lubricating oil of the Holy Spirit. Fill me with Your oil today so that all resistance is eliminated and I can grow more quickly into the fullness of Your kind of maturity.

The Secret of Forgiveness

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew 6:12 NAS95)

Thank-you, John, for taking a very careful look at this verse. I always find it very rewarding to ask the kind of tough, close questions that you brought up with a mind open and ready to receive deeper insights from the Spirit of truth. And while I do not want to replace the role of that Spirit I believe that when people join their minds and hearts together to seek to see God's face more clearly through this kind of study that they are never disappointed. God is eager to interact with people ready to receive.

I combed through each word of this verse in the Greek and tried to listen to the sense of what it seems to be saying. I am not sure which translation you were referring to when you said you looked at the literal translation. I have Young's Literal Translation but it does not have it written the way you described. And I have to also say that since I know nothing about how Greek is written sequentially I cannot propose myself as an authority of any kind on the subtle aspects that may be in the original language. All I can do is to compare the meanings of each word in relationship to the surrounding words and then try to get a sense of how those meanings may interact in various ways that are consistent with the truth that God has revealed about His character.

I did see the word for our from the Greek and it denotes ownership of something. In fact, it seems to be the word defining ownership. It is the exact same word used in the previous phrase also translated our connected to debts. So both of these instances seem to be noting the owner of whatever is the object of the phrase. In the first phrase the word debts seems to be the object of the our. In the second phrase it is debtors who are the object of the our.

What I find interesting is the difference between the words behind those two words that could give some insight for the our in each phrase. The first one refers to something that is owed, a debt but not just in a financial sense. It refers to a moral debt which in my understanding involves a hurt or injury at the heart level. It is that feeling you get when you know that someone owes you an apology, a debt that has been created by an injury or a violation of your freedom or your spirit. Your feelings and your spirit have been injured and damaged and someone clearly is the cause of that. Because of the way we are created we sense that an imbalance in our connectedness with others (or even ourself) has been created that needs to be restored to balance in some way before we can feel at peace.

The second word translated debtors is very similar but refers directly to the person involved who apparently created the injury. It carries all the same implications of the first word but places the focus on the person involved, not just the nature of the feeling.

Now when I add the our to each of these words involving debt what I see is that in the first case I am the owner of the debt created and in the second case I am the owner of the debtor – not owner in the sense of the one who generated it but owner in the sense that I am the one still holding the bag, the one who has controlling interest in the existence of this debtor and what is done about it.

When I see it from that light I see more clearly how consistent that is with everything I have learned from the various healing ministries and my own experiences in this area of life. The mistake that most of us make in relationship to the concept of emotional debts is that we think that the person who has offended us is the one responsible to remove the debt. After all, they are the one who clearly created it and therefore we assume that they likewise have the power to remove or fix it.

Wow, the more I get into this the more my own heart is being affected by what is emerging. This is really stirring up deep feelings inside of me as I ponder this. Thanks again for inviting me to look at this. Maybe God prompted you to bring this up for some very specific purpose that I am not aware of quite yet.

Believing that the people who have offended me are the ones responsible for repairing the damage they caused me is like going down a dead-end street expecting to emerge into the freedom of a super-highway. For it is becoming more clear from my own study and from all the things I have learned from other people that have explored this area is that the only way any of us will ever become free from the heavy weight of the emotional debts we all experience is to first take full ownership of the debt. Otherwise we can never be in a position to do anything truly effective about it.

The other alternative that produces even worse results is to indulge in the temptation to desire revenge or retribution against the debtor (who happens to also be owned by us in some sense according to the wording here). And this brings me back around to the main point of your original question yesterday. You said that what you saw in a literal translation of this verse was that we would be forgiven our debts by God just as we forgave ourselves of our debts. In a certain sense that is actually very accurate to a degree but can be confusing if not carefully considered in the context of everything else surrounding this.

The sense in which this can bring significant insight to this concept of forgiveness is the fact that we are the owner both of the debt created and have controlling interest in the existence of a debtor. When this is more clearly perceived I believe the difference between whether the debt was created by ourselves against ourselves or was created by someone else against ourselves may become possibly insignificant. What may be the main point that Jesus is making here is that we are the one with all the power to initiate a resolution of the problem and that even the forgiveness of God may be blocked from us by our unwillingness to release a debt or grudge that we carry, either against others or even possibly ourselves.

I hasten to add that blocking God's forgiveness from our heart has nothing whatsoever to do with God's side of this matter. We cannot prevent God from forgiving us. That is a fact that has always existed, even before Jesus died on the cross. Jesus did not come to die in order to procure forgiveness for us but He came to die to reveal the forgiving reality of the heart of God, both the Father and the Son. Forgiveness is a fact of reality that we only struggle to believe because of the massive deceptions that we struggle under, not because God has to be convinced to forgive. Forgiveness is something that describes the very nature of God that has never changed and never will.

The process of salvation is totally dedicated to bringing us back into alignment with the heart of the God in who's image we were created. Because of that Jesus came to both teach us and demonstrate what that original looks like and acts like and feels like and thinks like. And part of that process of re-education is exposing the basic principles by which reality exists. This issue of forgiveness and who has the power to initiate resolution and reconciliation is one of those principles of reality that has been seriously obscured by the great deceiver.

What Jesus is telling me here is that if I want to experience the reality of God's forgiveness and all the commensurate healing that will accompany that experience, I must choose to be willing to act in the same manner as God acts toward me. Of course, if I still have mistaken ideas about how God feels about me or how He forgives, then those mistaken ideas will corrupt my ability to live in the perfect freedom from bitterness and resentment that Jesus demonstrated in His life on earth.

Jesus wants us to realize the tremendous power we have within our own mind and heart to initiate our own freedom from all the debt that is literally killing us slowly in our hearts. God respects and values our freedom so immensely that He will never force us to forgive. Our will is the most important part of our makeup and is the key element that enables us to reflect the real nature of God Himself. Our free will is the only thing we have that empowers us to enter in to the experience of genuine love, for love has to be free or it is not love.

God deeply desires our love, for He created us to interact with His heart in that way along with all those around us. Forgiveness is the door waiting for us to pass through on our way to that freedom of perfect love. But one of the most important parts of this situation that we must be aware of is that we ourselves are the owners and possessors of the key that can unlock our prison cells of fear and pain or resentment. Our will is the hand that can take the key of forgiveness and with the authority of ownership we can both release the weight of the debt that is crushing the life out of us and can change the attitude of our heart toward those who we insist are our debtors, whether that be someone else or even ourselves.

A debtor is a label, a description of our perception of the identity of someone. When we determine that someone deserves the label of debtor, we ourselves are the one who determines that label in our own mind, we are the owner of that mental and social opinion of someone described as debtor. So because the whole concept of indebtedness is really an attitude, a state of mind that we maintain about someone, we as the owner of that concept are the only ones with the power to change that belief. For nothing that anyone else can do can force us to change our belief about the identity of whoever we consider to be a debtor. That is something only we can choose to do.

But likewise, I believe Jesus is revealing a parallel principle in this verse. We will always act like the perceived God we believe exists in our life. So if we refuse to forgive and release a debt and a debtor from our hearts, we also incapacitate our own hearts from embracing that forgiveness that has always existed and has always been available to us from the heart of God. This is not because God withholds it from us but because we lock the door of our hearts from being able to let it in.

This is very clearly implied in the word translated as in this verse. It denotes a direct linkage between the way we choose to act and think with the way we receive from God. It is a law of the mind in this case that the only way we can experience true forgiveness is to be willing to exercise it just as it is offered to us. Apparently the same part in the brain is required for both of these things. It is only when we unlock the door of our heart and release the debt owed to us that we will be able to experience the receiving end of that same experience. It is a very pointed application of the principle seen in what is called the Golden Rule.

Debt

Forgiveness is related to debt – emotional debt. In fact, the very opposite of forgiveness is debt-collecting. This debt is directly linked to the internal heat produced by the accumulation of this debt. Debt is created when a wrong is committed against my spirit, a violation of my freedom, an incursion into my privacy without permission, the use of force or fear to compel me to satisfy someone else's selfish desires against my will, a trespass against me.

Debts are being created continuously. Just the very existence of corruption all around us induces a certain amount of debt within our spirit. The injustices committed within the context of our political justice system which violates our sensibilities of fairness and right creates an intense sense of outrage that creates more debt inside. Violations of my rights and disrespect for my person or dignity by anyone else can create debt inside of me. Even unintentional mistakes can be misunderstood and become cause for more debt by my suspicious heart.

The original meaning of debt from the Bible conveys the idea of someone chained to me, a person who owes me something that I emotionally drag around on the end of a chain until I feel their obligations to me are satisfied. It denotes something of a slavery mentality where I believe someone should feel like a slave to me because of the debt they incurred against me.

It is very helpful to understand the reality and the nature of internal debt if I am ever to understand how to become free again. This debt is mainly in the spirit realm of my life which intensely affects my emotional being. Depending on my personality and perspective and assumptions, some things may produce much more debt in me than the same thing might in someone else. Likewise, my emotional makeup also will affect how the internal pressure and the resultant heat will react when left inside.

This internal heat and pressure works exactly like the internal heat that creates a volcano. Scientist now understand that the way a volcano will act is greatly dependent on the type of material that composes the makeup of the mountain. Some volcanoes tend to run almost continuously and have destructive lava streams of molten rock flowing down their sides much of the time. Other volcanoes tend to keep it hidden inside, looking good on the outside like a lot of us try to do. But as we have seen a number of times with volcanoes, this kind of dealing with internal pressure can have very explosive and devastating results unexpectedly.

This approach to the problem can sometimes become a little simplistic when compared to volcanoes, however. We may tend to assume from this comparison that it would be better to let our angry emotions vent more often so as to avoid a giant explosion that could hurt far more people. And while that kind of reasoning may sound very plausible, it fails to address the real problem effectively. It only operates along the line of symptom management instead of effectively targeting the root causes of anger or whatever other types of outgrowth may come from this internal pressure.

And it is true that anger is not the only demonstration or symptom of internal, unresolved debts. It may be the most common one, but there are a number of other potential reactions to the buildup of pressure inside our souls from undealt with debts. Many times, much more than most people suspect, our bodies will become diseased in some way as a direct result of internalized debt. This has not only been proven by science but has been pointed out a number of times by people inspired by the Spirit of God.

Addictions are sometimes a symptom of the presence of debt. It is true that addictions are most likely to be associated with failure to advance adult maturity as James Wilder has so aptly pointed out. But this failure to move on in maturity by so many people that results in any number of various addictions will also create a certain amount of debt internally which produces the pressure that one seeks to resolve with the pleasure they derive from their addiction of choice.

What I find interesting is that the judging and condemning and contempt that I am studying about in Romans 14 currently is also likely linked to this issue of unresolved debt. In turn it also can induce debt in the ones whom it is directed against. So in essence, a person who is carrying around a lot of debt will often tend to create debt in the spirit of others by their improper words, actions and attitudes toward them. Is this a subconscious attempt to rid ourselves of our own debt? It might be quite possible, for the concept of revenge or vengeance is an attitude in which we somehow think we can re-balance the books, so to speak, so as to hopefully free ourselves of the sense of debt we feel in our own hearts.

A person who is full of debt in their spirit cannot limit who around them is going to be contaminated by their own spirit of debt-collecting. They may think that they have specific debtors in mind that they want to extract payment from for the feelings built up inside, but their spirit of debt-collection will infuse every relationship that they have whether they want it to or not. And debt-collection is exactly what all of us are wired to do in our flesh when we allow a sense of debt to remain in our hearts from a violation committed against us.

Debt-collection permeates nearly every relationship that we see in this world. And if you want to get a taste of the kind of reaction that debt-collection produces in others, just think about how you feel whenever a debt-collection agency calls you on the phone to harangue you about a real or supposed debt you owe someone. I don't know about you, but I know that the enormous intensity of emotions that instantly rises up in me when this happens is so strong that sometimes I cannot even think clearly. My adrenaline begins to flow and my blood begins to boil and I have to be very careful to quickly disconnect from the situation before I make a complete fool of myself.

I realize that this is primarily due to a lack of maturity on my part, but it also betrays a reservoir of unresolved, internal debt in my spirit that I need to become free from. For it is not just the supposed debts externally that are the problem but the much greater problem is the internal debts within my own spirit that compel me to act irrationally at times. These intense moments are usually connected with a lot of fear as well as anger mixed in with a lot of bitterness and resentment. These are all ingredients of debt that needs to be dealt with if I am ever to enjoy real freedom.

I intend to take more time to think about this issue of debt and forgiveness. For whatever reason it has become a very intense focal point of my attention today and I want to understand it and its implications much better.

Unconditional Repentance

In the last two times I have looked into the issue of forgiveness, I explored what it really means or doesn't mean and the issue of whether or not it must be earned or is unconditional. Now I would like to go a little farther and look at the other side of forgiveness. Why is it necessary for me when I am an offending party to seek forgiveness of one whom I may have hurt or offended. Especially given that true forgiveness is asking a person to take upon themselves the full ownership and responsibility for the pain I have caused them, it seems like an affront or almost absurd for me to ask them to do such a thing for me.

While it is necessary for an offended person to take responsibility for their own pain in order to ever become truly free from it, what is going on in the heart of the offender, the “sinner” who has committed an offense that may have caused irreparable damage to the heart of another?

I can remember as a child growing up being forced to say I was sorry to someone whom I had hurt in some way. Sometimes the “authority” insisted that I also ask for their forgiveness as well. In order to avoid the results of resistance to obvious duress I usually complied with the demands but seldom had any significant sincerity involved. I suspect that most, if not all forced “repentance” routines, do not help anyone experience true repentance or effect the healing results of true forgiveness. These are forced exercises to make externals to appear to accomplish what we want but often end up doing the very opposite. They are really little more than trainings for hypocrisy for everyone involved. The offended party receives little healing or comfort from the forced confession of the offender and the offender learns to comply to demands under duress with little or no change at the heart level.

This scenario may be spruced up and the details refined as we grow older but the main idea of this exercise too often carries over with many of us into adult life. It permeates our whole judicial system, is reflected in the ways we report on events in the world around us in the media and has become the norm for what we look for in public conflict resolution. We may sometimes find people who try to take it to a deeper level but generally the focus is on making things look good on the surface so we can move on with life and pretend that everything is resolved.

Given this culture in our society, what are the important things that I need to know about forgiveness from the offending side of the equation in light of the real truth about forgiveness? I can begin to understand the need for me to forgive others so that I can become free in my own heart, but what are the issues going on for the person who has offended or sinned against others?

One thing I need to note before going any farther is that the person I have offended does not have to wait until I am ready to ask for forgiveness in order to forgive. God has forgiven us long before we even existed – it is never conditional on our desire for it. But on the other hand it certainly can make it easier and an encouragement for them to forgive if the one who offended them comes in a spirit of true humility and remorse asking for their forgiveness. But again, if we apply the new insights into forgiveness to this situation it takes on quite a different aspect.

What is becoming clear is that each person is primarily responsible for their own issues and the condition of their own spirit. But in addition we are also responsible for how we treat others because that is the influence that we are accountable for. So if I have offended someone, even though their own freedom from pain is dependent on their own choices, I am responsible to be honest about how I have contributed to the damage I have caused in another heart. Of course that damage is not always clear depending from what angle a person is looking at the situation, but we must learn to be much more honest about our own faults and sins and the effect that our choices or actions have on others.

Repentance and forgiveness are very closely linked. In a sense they may be just two sides of the same door. To be genuine, forgiveness needs to be unconditional and repentance too, to be effective needs to be unconditional. But true repentance and a real desire for forgiveness can only come about in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the heart that motivates and empowers us to move in that direction. We may be able to generate all sorts of false illusions or feelings that pass off as repentance or reconciliation, but the true versions of these necessary elements of salvation can only be experienced in response to the enabling of the Spirit of the One who created us. To try any other method is to follow a path that is both artificial and external in nature and will leave us with less than effective or satisfactory results.

Quite likely the core reason that I commit an offense in the first place is because of unresolved issues deep in my own heart. Most, if not all sin is an outgrowth of false beliefs and residual effects of internal damage to our spirit that needs to be faced and resolved at the heart level. When I react from my pain by sinning against someone else's heart, I am simply passing on to others the results of pain that I have not dealt with myself and causing more roots to potentially spring up in other lives to be passed on to yet others if not checked by the Spirit of grace.

So part of my need to ask for forgiveness is my need to search for the root causes of why I acted the way I did to cause the offense. I do not believe it is good enough to just say some words and go through some socially acceptable motions in order to accomplish what is needed for true repentance. I not only need to do what is possible to address resolving the other person's pain but I also need to view this as an opportunity to discover a hidden fault within my own heart and receive healing. What is really needed is a mending of relationships, not a setting straight of some balance sheet or a satisfying of some artificial rules somewhere. The real issue is the condition of our relationships and the spirit within us and between us. That is the most important thing to pay attention to in the issue of forgiveness.

So what is the real purpose of seeking forgiveness in this light? It looks to me like the goal of real forgiveness is a reuniting of hearts and a repair of ruptured, damaged relationships. This is the most important aspect of forgiveness; it is to accomplish reconciliation and bonding of hearts together into a unity of spirit in the harmony of love and respect. Anything less than this is artificial and falls short of what our hearts were designed for.

So when I have offended or hurt someone the real issue is the damage in the arena of the spirit. I have wounded someone's spirit and I have great power to assist in healing for that person by recognizing my responsibility in that damage, acknowledge it to that person and seeking for healing and reconciliation with them. But again, this is not primarily for the purpose of satisfying some legal requirement as it is to correctly begin a process of healing, repair and new life in both myself and the person I have hurt.

But what happens if I am truly remorseful for what I have done, I respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and agree with His convictions in my heart (the real meaning of the word “confession”) and seek to make things right with the other wounded party but they are unwilling to accept my offers of reconciliation? What if they refuse to forgive me and reject my apologies? And after all, that only sounds reasonable given the true definition of forgiveness. If I am asking them to accept all the pain I caused them and not hold it against me anymore that is a very stiff request that many are not prepared to accept and even find quite unreasonable. How does that response affect the way I relate to them?

Well, I happen to be in that very situation with at least one person in my life right now. I have grappled with this issue for about a year now and desire to know the truth about this issue. I am coming to realize that I cannot hold myself responsible for the choices that the other person makes as to how they are going to deal with the pain I have caused them. I have done everything I know to do within the tight restrictions of communication that they have put on our relationship to convey to them my deep regrets for the pain I caused them and have asked for their forgiveness. But due to many years of false mentoring by other people in their life and false assumptions about my motives that they refuse to question, they find it very hard to understand that they are in bondage to their own pain as long as they hold me hostage in their mind.

Many people mistakenly believe that if they forgive someone who has hurt or abused them that somehow they will lose some sort of “protection” that unforgiveness seemingly provides their heart. It is another classic lie of Satan residing in our flesh that causes us to believe that if we unconditionally forgive someone for hurting us it gives them blanket permission to come and hurt us again. But again, this notion is based on the false definitions of forgiveness, the legal model of forgiveness that assumes that forgiveness is letting someone off the hook or pretending that the offense was not so bad as the pain we are feeling. Our hearts understandably resist going into denial of our pain and because we may think that is what is involved in forgiveness we refuse to go down that path.

This is very understandable if these false notions about forgiveness were really true. But when we begin to learn the truth about real forgiveness it will be much easier for us to begin exercising it on a more regular basis. The truth is, forgiveness is the only path that we can take to healing and restoration of our souls. All counterfeits will leave us empty and betrayed and need to be avoided. But both forgiveness and repentance are a personal choice that must be taken by the offended party and the offender respectively and not dependent on the other.

I have to personally choose to listen to the convictions of the Holy Spirit, respond to the promptings to face my real issues, take responsibility for the pain I have caused others and do as much as I can to seek reconciliation with them. Beyond that I cannot force the other person to accept my apologies or forgive me if they choose to cling to fears about me no matter how false they may be. I am responsible for my own choices only, but I must also cooperate with the guidance of the Spirit to do all in my power to address the damage that has occurred both in the spirit of those whom I have hurt and in my own spirit as well.

Once we begin to realize the individual responsibility and the separateness of each person's power to determine how they are going to act in this situation, it can be seen more clearly how even if one party dies before healing or reconciliation occurs that the other person can still choose to do their part either to forgive or to repent and seek forgiveness. In that situation God can act in place of the deceased party and provide the response that our heart needs for healing. Thus we do not have to be held hostage to our loss of opportunity for reconciliation that our heart is designed to enjoy.

Unconditional Forgiveness

Last time I explored the problem of forgiveness as it relates to asking others to forgive me while understanding the true implications of what I am really asking them to do. When I understand that real forgiveness means that the forgiving person accepts full responsibility for all of the pain still inside of them caused by the offender, it seems almost offensive or irresponsible to ask someone to forgive me for something that I have done to cause them that pain.

But there are other aspects of forgiveness that I need to explore as well. With a completely new view of what constitutes real forgiveness the implications have a wide area of impact on related issues and I feel the need to look at more of them. One of these is the issue of whether forgiveness should be unconditional or should it be requested before being granted.

This is an issue that I have observed great confusion over in the minds of many people all of my life. One of my best friends many years ago could not even bring himself to imagine that the men surrounding Hitler could ever be forgiven for the atrocities they had committed against millions of people. The horrible and intentional nature of their crimes seemed to preclude, in his mind anyway, the option of their ever being forgiven either by men or by God.

Because of this intense feeling of his – and I would note it was based on some personal experience in the events of that tragic war – he simply could not believe the stories relayed in a book I loaned him called The Cross and The Swastika. This book told about a Christian who spent months ministering to these top criminals while they were being held in detention awaiting the war crimes trials held in Nuremberg, Germany after the war. Many of these men, according to the book, accepted Christ as their Savior and claimed the promise of salvation before they were executed for their war crimes. But one man in particular rejected the messages of mercy brought by the author of this book and before his execution committed suicide in a final act of defiance to show he was still in control of his own destiny.

This friend of mine, raised in a similar theological environment that I was raised in, did not believe that forgiveness could be unconditional. Along with many, probably the majority of people, he believed that a person had to have a genuine repentance and seek for forgiveness before God would offer that gift to that person.

This is a very commonly held belief about forgiveness, but is it really true? Is forgiveness only able to be offered to those who are willing and desiring and deserving somehow to receive it? If so, what are the prerequisites to qualify for forgiveness? Different people have different opinions about what qualifies a person to receive forgiveness and these ideas permeate most religions in one way or another.

But if these basic assumptions are not true to begin with then all the theological propositions about what qualifies a person to be forgiven are pointless discussions about irrelevancies. The idea of unconditional forgiveness is shocking and revolting to many people who believe that it violates all sense of decency and justice and so dismiss it out of hand before even seriously considering whether it may indeed be true. But the reason most people struggle to accept this idea of unconditional forgiveness is because they already have confused ideas of the real truth about forgiveness. If forgiveness means some of the things I discussed last time as commonly held beliefs it is quite understandable why people struggle to believe in the possibility of unconditional forgiveness.

If forgiveness means that there are no consequences involved from commissions of sin, if forgiveness means simply getting off the hook legally and set free to continue in a life of sin, then indeed unconditional forgiveness doesn't make any sense. But then, some try to modify this definition slightly and say that if a person really repents sufficiently enough – whatever that means – then they should get off the hook legally etc. But that is just another spin on a twisted belief about forgiveness that still doesn't make real sense.

One of the problems in understanding this issue is the confusion we have about justice and the difference between God's laws and man's system of laws. There is a radical difference between the ways of God and the created natural order of principles and consequences in contrast to the artificial system of so-called justice and legal arrangements created by men. Man's laws are prescriptive by nature and have to have arbitrary punishments and enforcers to implement them effectively. They focus entirely on external behaviors though they at times attempt to determine intentions of the mind. They are also based on economics though many people are not yet aware of that fact. Human laws are a poor imitation of the true system of God's laws which operate very differently than man's. But if we do not clearly understand these differences we will tend to believe that God operates His government just the same way we do.

But God's laws are simply descriptions of the way things are, not artificial rules and demands with arbitrary punishments attached. Although God has throughout human history been forced to implement human-style laws and punishments, that was never His intention for the relationship He wishes to have with His children. He simply has to relate to men in ways that they can understand and respond to in the mental condition they are in at the time. He still has to do that yet today, but inherent in all His dealings with men is the seeming inconsistencies in His instructions that actually reveal His desire to move us far past the childlike relationship of rules and restraints to a more mature relationship of love, respect and mutual enjoyment and trust.

If we are to understand better the truth about forgiveness then we need to also understand the truth about law from God's perspective. When we begin to perceive that God's laws are descriptive in nature rather than prescriptive, then the need for “getting off the hook” becomes irrelevant and a completely different dimension of reality begins to emerge. Included with that new perception of reality comes a radically different picture of God in our hearts as we begin to perceive a God we do not have to cower before but a God who is longing to have a sensible, realistic, two-way relationship with each one of His created beings.

Having a proper understanding of both law as God sees it and forgiveness in its true form we can also begin to make much better sense of what really happened at the cross of Calvary. Instead of Jesus offering Himself as an appeasement sacrifice to neutralize the anger of a God thirsting for revenge and blood, we begin to see the expression of an infinite heart of passionate love expressing that love in ways that at first seem very baffling to us. Part of what really happened at Calvary was the exact reverse of the teachings of many Christians today who believe that sinners will suffer eternal wrath in the hands of an angry God in the fires of hell. What happened at Calvary was a loving God falling into the hands of angry, hate-filled men. In doing so He exposed the natural consequences of sin – death in all its hideous ugliness.

But what was the most prominent feature that emerged during the hours of torture and agony that the Son of God suffered at the hands of sin-filled humans? It was the clear light of unconditional forgiveness in the blackest darkness of men's system of supposed justice exposed as the fraud that it is. While the legal system of men was used and manipulated to appear to produce justice while it was obvious that is was nothing but a veneer of legitimacy, God displayed the truth about real forgiveness as being the choice of the offended God and having nothing to do with the attitude of those needing His forgiveness.

When we look at this situation through the lens of a correct concept of real forgiveness it suddenly makes so much more sense. Remember, forgiveness is the choice on the part of an offended party to take full ownership of all the pain caused them by another and refusing to hold it against them. This allows complete freedom in the heart of the offended party from any bondage to being hostage to those offending him. That does not mean there are not natural consequences that occur as a result of the actions and choices of the offenders in their own lives. In the true system of principle-based “law” that governs the universe, natural consequences are inevitable unless grace and mercy intervene to prevent them. But that does not mean that forgiveness is not there all along.

Jesus did not die in order to give God permission to forgive – that is based on human-style judicial thinking and is not reflective of God's reality. Jesus died in order to demonstrate the forgiveness that has always been and always will be in the heart of God toward His wayward children, human and angelic alike. Jesus came to reveal in His life and death both the passionate love of the Godhead for us and the results that all will suffer if they choose to reject the forgiveness already provided for them and is irrevocable. Just as God's love is eternally unconditional, so is God's forgiveness.

At this point some would argue that if we are unconditionally forgiven then that would necessarily mean that everyone would be saved, and most people know that is not true. So since everyone will not be saved then it is concluded that there is no such thing as unconditional forgiveness.

But this is simplistic and circular logic that does not hold water upon close examination. It again is based on an assumption that if a person is forgiven then they are automatically going to be saved and will end up in heaven. But forgiveness is not synonymous with being safe to live with God for eternity in a loving relationship with Him. And being lost does not mean that a person was not forgiven. It simply means that that person rejected and repulsed the forgiveness that was available to them at any time they were willing to receive it and allow it to transform their heart. Being prepared for heaven is a very different thing than being just forgiven.

God is not the one who determines whether or not we are saved. He will be the one who exposes the choices that each person has made in their deepest heart to the onlooking universe, but He does not make the choice about that person's destiny. Each person is fully responsible for the choice they make themselves about what they will do with the forgiveness and grace that are irrevocably in place and will always be. The choice each one of us makes about our belief in God's forgiveness and His attitude toward us will determine whether that forgiveness will have a transforming effect on our hearts or whether we will cling to our appeasement models of fear-based religion. We can never earn God's forgiveness by any amount of repentance or performance or appeasement of any kind. We can only believe in what is already in the heart of God and change our opinions about how He feels about us thus releasing His power in our souls to re-create His image in our hearts.

In the same way, we must follow the example of God in not thinking that others have to repent to a satisfactory level before we are willing to forgive them in the true sense of the word. To do so is only to hold ourself hostage to the choices of those who have hurt us. What insane reasoning! Why would we wait for an abuser to repent before we are willing to be free in heart and spirit? Because of lies believed about ourselves and about God, that's why! Because of false notions about forgiveness and justice and many others things that Satan has confused and blinded our minds and hearts with. The clearer we see the truth about God and the unconditional nature of His love and forgiveness the sooner we will feel the attractions of love in our hearts and the quicker we will begin to heal and be on the path to wholeness again.

(part 3)