70 x 7

It’s funny how God often speaks to people the same message at the same time. The last night that I was home for Thanksgiving Break, I was lying in bed, and as is my usual routine, I was thinking and praying over my day. I have a really hard time getting to sleep most nights. It’s like the wheels in my mind realize it’s bedtime and crank into a higher gear. So, I lay in bed almost every night just thinking- which never ends well for me. My mind has a tendency to wander into all sorts of places it has no business going, mainly by processing and analyzing people’s intentions in my day. “When she said this to me… I wonder if she really meant something else…” I find myself chasing rabbits down trails I never meant to walk through. SO, in effort to remedy my problem of the wandering mind, I try to speak truth out loud over my day. This is a new strategy for me, but it’s working beautifully. No Megan, you are worried about this, but your God is big. Your God is not surprised by anything. He has planned the days of your life right down to the very hour, and he has GOOD in mind for you. Boom, I instantly feel better. Really, overactive thinkers out there- you should try it.

So, back to my point. I was lying in bed and I felt like the Lord was speaking to me one word. FORGIVE. I honestly had no idea what this was about. Forgive? I’m not mad at anyone…

I thought about the times in my life that I had the most freedom and felt the closest to the Lord, and I realized they all had some key factor in common. In every instance, I had chosen to forgive someone over something that was eating me up inside. It was stealing my thoughts and dominating me. Often, it was something extremely stupid that I, for whatever reason, was holding onto. Perhaps so that I would have an excuse to feel bitter? Or maybe so that I would have someone else to blame for my attitude or insecurities. Maybe remembering other people’s flaws made me subconsciously feel better about myself. Either way, I realized one thing.

The only person I am hurting by not forgiving is ME.

I wonder, if I had forgiven sooner, would I have experienced the joy months ago? In my lame attempts to “show them!” I had really just chained myself to a wall.

The sin of unforgiveness is a monster. He tells you over and over again that your feelings of bitterness are justified, until you start to believe it. You start to feel those thoughts creep up, and you just HAVE to tell somebody what a jerk so-and–so has been to you lately… and when you feel convicted about it, you suppress it by reminding yourself that what she did was REALLY CRUMMY, and WRONG, and she deserves it… and the worst part about unforgiveness is that just when you think you’ve let something go, that person says something that hurts your feelings, and all of a sudden it all comes pouring out again. “Well remember the time you did this!?” or “Well the reason I act that way is because you did this!...Five months ago…” Just thinking about it makes be laugh at my own stupidity.

So I woke up the next morning and walked into the kitchen. My mom was standing there teary-eyed stirring cookie batter. I asked her why she was misty eyed, and she told me that she’d just finished listening to a really good sermon on none other than, you guessed it… Forgiveness. I laughed inside at God’s timing. We talked for a while about it, and all of a sudden I knew- this is what I need to get right TODAY. I thought about every person I had any type of bad memory about, whether a former friend, roommate, or even family member. I realized that as much as unforgiveness chains me, it also chains the people I hold grudges against. Even people I love that I just can’t let that ONE thing go. How can a person ever walk out in LIFE if all I ever do is remind them of the areas in their life that they failed? Why, when I am called to speak LIFE, do I choose to believe and speak death? I can’t imagine how to find the strength to walk forward if all I heard were the times I hadn’t done things right. My heart broke as I realized how much life I had stolen from people through my sin of unforgiveness. My stupid heart wants just something I can hold against someone so that when I make a mistake I can turn the tables- I can have them under my thumb. It kind of makes me sick to think about. Why did I waste so much time dwelling on flaws when I could have been telling those people just how much I loved them, and how much I valued their friendships and calling out their giftings instead of airing out their dirty laundry?

And the truth is, if I claim to love Jesus, I cannot keep walking in this sin. How can I claim to love a God who’s most beautiful and wonderful quality is his ability to forgive me, and NEVER bring it up again? Do I have an excuse just because it gets hard?

Sometimes forgiving people is hard work. You may give and give all that you have, and get walked all over time and time again. Someone may say something REALLY hurtful that takes your heart captive for weeks. You may even have suffered for years watching people in your family mistreat each other. Maybe you’ve watched your family hold grudges against each other, never forgiving, only running. You may forgive a person a hundred times and offer your arms wide open for them in love, but then it gets hard when they begin to take advantage of your forgiveness. So, when that happens, they deserve it, right? Wrong. The bible tells us the number of times we are to forgive a person. When asked, Jesus replied “seventy times seven.” That’s an awful lot of times to forgive someone. And notice, there is no conditional statement on that. He didn’t say “seventy times seven, IF they say they’re sorry.” He forgives all without condition.

I can assure you, he has forgiven me something more like “8 billion times 7 million.” And yet, it’s not his holding my flaws over my head that makes me love him. It’s not him screaming “You didn’t spend time with me this morning Megan, so you better seriously do better tomorrow.” Or “yeah, the reason I didn’t bless you was because YOU made me look bad today!” No, that is not how my Jesus works. The bible says it’s his kindness that leads us to repentance. It’s his grace that never fails that makes me love him. It’s the way he speaks gently that makes me want to talk to him more and more. And I wonder when constantly forgiving me will finally be too much for him to handle- and the answer is never.

Dominating that sin is nothing more than a choice. Just like loving someone is a choice. Just like choosing to listen to life giving talk and music instead of death is a choice. Drawing near to God is not some mystical thing, it’s a choice. If you’re waiting for God to speak to you through a bush or a billboard, or even a warm fuzzy feeling, why should you assume he would, when he has given you his words on paper and they are sitting inside a dusty bible on your nightstand? I find that renewing my heart and my mind is nothing more than choosing to believe truth, to listen to truth, and to have faith that God is who he says he is, and he will never change. He will forgive me just as well when I’m 80 as he did today. Because he never changes, and yet I pray with all my heart he changes me. Today, choose forgiveness with me. Choose life, and break the chains.