Category: Uncategorized

Many of us struggle in different ways with our self image.  In fact most  people you talk with would admit to having a fairly low self image no matter how successful they appear.  Some never seem to overcome their image of  themselves and others struggle to achieve to compensate for it.  There are people who are fairly confident and sure of themselves, but most struggle.  This is often because the most important people in our lives have criticized us or challenged decisions we made or made fun our failures.  Or they told us we would never amount to anything.  I am sure most of us have heard variants of all of this.  And as a result to struggle under that image or we fight to prove those people wrong.

I was one of those people.  And I am learning I don’t have to struggle.  How am I learning this you ask?  Because I came to know how God sees me.  Once I learned this I can then place less emphasis on what others think and say.  So how does God see you and I?

First God sees us as valuable. The scriptures teach that Jesus gave up all He had in heaven to come to earth, live like you and I, and then to take our punishment upon Himself.  Because of the decision Adam made we were all born separated from God.  And because of the wrong things we have all done.  But God designed each of us for relationship.  A relationship with Him first and then with others.  Without relationships people wither and die inside.  This is because relationships are an integral need for each one of us.  The bible’s most famous verse says that Jesus came because God loved us so much and that through Him we could have eternal life. John 3:16.  But many people have interpreted eternal life wrong.  Eternal life isn’t to live forever.  Every life conceived is eternal in nature.  Eternal life simply means that we are able to have relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ whom He sent. John 17:3.  God created us for relationship and we broke that relationship and couldn’t ever hope to rebuild it on our own.  So Jesus came and died and rose again so that we could again have relationship with us.  God sees you and I as extremely valuable. You and I are worth dying for.

Second God sees us as acceptable. We don’t have to struggle and work to achieve the acceptance of God like we do with people.  The most hurtful thing we can ever experience in life is rejection.  When we are rejected our most basic need is denied and we all struggle with getting past this.  And we often struggle to show people how good and ‘perfect’ we are so they will accept us.   Unfortunately none of us are perfect nor will we ever be perfect.  But that doesn’t stop us from trying.  We put on a good face never letting people see what is really going on inside each of us.  And we do the same with God.  And we don’t have to.  God invites each one of us to come to Him simply as we are.  Besides He already knows everything about us.  We don’t have to hide.   We can accept the work of Jesus for us and receive the gift of eternal life, recognizing that there is nothing we can do at all to achieve acceptance from Him, and no way that we can gain anything from Him on our own merit.  Nothing we can do can make us any more or less acceptable to God.

Thirdly God sees us as capable. Paul understood this concept very well.  He said “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” So what does that mean you ask?  It simply means that there is nothing that God will ask me to do that I am unable to do because of the work and life of Jesus in me.  And even if I make a mess the bible says God “works everything for good”.  So even my messes God turns into great masterpieces.  With Jesus I am capable of all things.

Fourthly God sees us as lovable. God loves us completely and totally as we are.  In fact God won’t love you any more tomorrow than He does today, and will love you no less.  God’s love is always on extravagant.  There is no other setting.  We are acceptable to Him because of that love, and through the work of Jesus on the cross.  God loves each of us totally and completely without reservation, or ration or restraint.  God doesn’t love anyone more or less than anyone else, and He doesn’t have bad hair days.  His love is complete and total.    In fact it could be said that He could live without us so He died for us.

Lastly God sees us as forgivable. Because of Jesus God can forgive our sins.  There is nothing we can do that God cannot forgive, and not life is to far gone for Him to rescue.  Jesus didn’t come to the world to condemn it. He came to reveal the heart of God towards us and show us that we are accepted, forgivable, lovable,valuable, and capable.  There is nothing more important to God than you and I.

Now we can choose to believe this or simply decide that it doesn’t matter.  It is really up to us.  We can receive the gift of life offered by God or ignore it.  But I would welcome you to see yourself as God sees you.  It will totally change your life.  I know because it totally changed mine.

Much of Christian life has been filled with rules and regulations.  Do this and don’t do that and God will be happy with you.  And if you measure up then you are acceptable to the church as well.  But if you don’t then neither God or the church will be able to accept you.  And so for Christians everywhere life is a struggle to constantly measure up to an external life of requirements in order to be acceptable.  And when we can’t measure up we put on a good face because if anyone knew we were not able to live up to the requirements of being a Christian we would no longer be acceptable.  It is no wonder the world thinks the church is full of hypocrites.

All through time we have been trying and struggling to measure up.  Nothing has changed.  The law of Moses was given to people as  a list of what was required to be acceptable to God, and we have been trying to live up to it ever since.  And there has never been a single person who ever lived who was able to live up to the law of Moses.  No one except Jesus.  And yet we still struggle.  Might I suggest that this is not what the law was given for.  It was not a list we needed to live up to be acceptable.

So what was the law given to us for? Romans 3:20 says For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. So if the law wasn’t given to make us acceptable to God, and that is what we are struggling to do then what was the purpose of the law?  Well the last half of Romans 3:20 says The law simply shows us how sinful we are. The purpose of the law was simply to show us that we were and could never be acceptable to God on our own merit.  In fact the scriptures teach that “All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” So all of the things we struggle to live up to that we think make us acceptable to God and the church are like dirty greasy rags when compared to God’s righteousness.

So how then are we acceptable to God? Only by the work of Jesus in us are we made acceptable.  Scripture teaches that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.  It is a done deal when we accept what Jesus did on the cross for each one of us.  So then why do we struggle so much.  Paul asked the same question in Galatians 3:3.  Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? We struggle and struggle and can get nowhere because we forget what the law was given for.  To reveal to us that we can gain nothing at all before God by anything we do.  It is impossible.  And yet we struggle.

The task we have is to allow God to make changes in our lives, responding to His hand and direction.  Only then can we become who He desires us to be.  Only then can we allow the people around us the same freedom to become who God wants them to be.  The apostle John said, when asked if he was the Messiah, “I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. The real action comes next: The main character in this drama—compared to him I’m a mere stagehand—will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”

John said that the kingdom of life of Jesus would ignite in us, changing us from the inside out and making us to be who He desires.  This is the whole thesis of Paul’s writings in Romans 7.  When he says that he is a wretched man who could not live right before God, and when he wanted to do right he would do wrong, he is simply recognizing his standing before God.  He recognized there was nothing good in him except Jesus and nothing he could do would bring him closer to God.  Ever.  He recognized the purpose of the law.  And only the life of Jesus in him being allowed to live out through him would bring him into living the life that God wanted.  Paul’s struggle was over in himself.

So why do we struggle?  We don’t need to.  Psalms says “EXCEPT THE Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” Even if we were able to build our lives by  the outward standards of the law, we would be expending all that energy and effort for no value.  It would be of no value at all.  And yet we struggle.  I think it is time for us as Christians to let go of the rules and regulations we have and to stop judging ourselves and each other by standards that God never set.  Time for us to respond simply to the hand of God in us and allow Him to live His life in us, bringing us into what He desires for us.  That is what Jesus wanted.  He said to come to Him and learn the “unforced rhythms of grace”.  We don’t have to work at becoming.  We simply need to surrender and allow God to work in us.  That is what Philippians says.  “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” That is the kingdom life in us.   We can stop our struggles and allow God to do what He does best,  making us to be like Jesus.  Something we cannot do ourselves

Forgive and forget.   Seems to be a message that we all have heard at one time or another.  And one we all would agree is extremely hard to do, and for many something that they are unwilling to do.  We think we must make the ones who hurt us pay for their actions, or at least they should come to us and apologize and make amends before we forgive them.   Or we try to forgive them, but we can never really forget about it, and the memories stir up the pain again and again making us feel like we can never be free.

So if I am to forgive and forget to be free of this pain, how come I can never get free and how come I  can never forget?  When this happens I think we often give up on trying to forgive and we simply settle into reliving the past and it becomes a part of our lives we simply accept.  I think this happens for a couple of reasons.

1> We think when we forgive it erases all the feelings. I used to feel this way, and wonder why I could never, I thought, forgive.  I could put the feelings and hurt out of my mind for a time, sometimes a long time, but something would happen, or something someone said would bring them back up for me to relive again and again.  Or they would simply keep me from launching forward into new things and new relationships because I wouldn’t be able to trust totally again.  But forgiveness was never meant to erase our feelings.

2>  We think we must completely forget about what happened. This is the other problem with forgiveness.   We think we have to forget to truly forgive.  And yet we all have patterns of behaviour in our lives that if we stay in relationship with someone long enough will cause hurt and will continue to bring up memories of past hurts.  Something your wife says to you 15 years after an incident will bring up the memory of something she did to hurt you.  For some the time frames my simply be months instead of years.  So if forgetting is integral to forgiveness we feel we can never forgive.

First off I don’t think we can honestly forgive others without God’s help.  It is not in us naturally.  I know I had to go and bring God into the picture.  But I know the struggle to forgive, and I personally know the help that God offers us.  We all very naturally know how to keep a grudge.  It is natural behaviour.  No one has to instruct us or teach us how.  We do it naturally from the day we are born.  What is not natural for us is forgiveness.  It is something we need to learn about.  And God is very willing to help us if we ask.

Second we need to understand that forgiveness has two parts; a choice we make, and a process we walk through.  Forgiveness is as much of a choice we make as the choice to love someone and stay committed to them for our whole life.  We see this choice most often in marriage, till death do us part.  We choose to love one another and honour and fulfill that choice until we die.  We make a grave mistake when we only see love as a feeling, because feelings change often.  And we make just as grave a mistake when we see forgiveness as a feeling.  When we forgive we most often feel like nothing has happened.  Sometimes we can feel as though the weight of the world has lifted from us, but not usually.  But that is ok.  Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling.  I must choose for forgive.  Forgiveness is also a process.  I must continue to make the choice to forgive until my feelings catch up.  Sometimes it takes time for us to work through the hurt and pain.  And just as it takes time for a wound to heal it can take time for the feelings to catch up to our choice.

Third we must understand that forgiveness doesn’t involve forgetting.  God never forgets a single thing.  I know some of you are shouting but when God forgives “He casts our sin into the sea of His forgetfulness.”  And yes this is true.  It is what the bible states.  But how can an all knowing God forget anything?  We misunderstand this verse totally.  So what does God really do.  It simply means that although He can remember what happened, He will never bring it up ever in your relationship with Him, and He will not withhold any part of Himself from you as a result of the hurt.  But He never forgets about it.  He just loves us to much to allow it to separate us.  So He chooses to not remember.  And we simply need to do the same.  So instead of having historical, I mean hysterical arguments, we have to choose to not remember what happened and never bring it up again.

Forgiveness is about our choice and about our healing.  When we don’t forgive we are holding on to the hurt so that we can make that person pay for what they did.  We can never heal and never get past the pain.  When we forgive we are taking back control of our life and choosing to begin the healing process and letting go of the responsibility to make someone pay.  Will that person pay?  I  can guarantee it.  God keep precise accounts of all our actions, and He will call each one of us to answer for our lives one day.  What we are doing is simply letting go of the ownership of making them pay.  Forgiveness is totally for our benefit.  It is totally about me and not the other person.  They factor into the equation only if you are keeping a relationship open with them, but forgiveness is about me first.  Letting go of the pain and hurt and allowing me to heal and move on with my life.

One last comment.  The bible teaches that God will forgive us completely when we ask.  Except for one instance.  When we choose to not forgive.   The bible states “forgive so that you may be forgiven.”  So if we want our list of things we need to answer to one day to be short it involves forgiveness here and now.  Unforgiveness puts up a wall between you and God that will not allow the forgiveness He offers to pour into your life.  Not only does it keep you tied to your pain, but it also blocks you from the love that God offers you.  Unforgiveness only hurts you.  Forgiveness is what frees you up to live again.