And Forgive us our Debts, as we forgive our debtors
Matthew 6:12
Forgiveness.
It rarely comes easy.
I recently heard someone say “Forgiveness is warfare.” I will be talking about that in the next podcast when I interview belle Bimel about this subject, but I have been mulling that over. Forgiveness opens a gate of God’s power to move and change a situation. When we long to our bitterness, we hinder the work God wants to do through prayer. However, when we can stop listening to the lies Satan is whispering about our “right” to be angry and forgive anyway.. then “whoosh” God will meet you with His power and you will have gained fresh authority in the spiritual realms.
I have had many many opportunities to practice this challenging task, called “Forgiveness.” I have also desperately needed forgiveness from others after my own foibles held me captive. But for todays episode, I want to focus on one specific story from years ago.
I am going to change a number of details to protect individuals involved, but I want to be raw and honest here, because this story will explain how God taught me power principles about Forgiveness. I will tell you from the outset, forgiveness long ago washed over these things and I bear no-one ill will.
Let’s start with a Bike Ramp that I could see from my kitchen window as I cooked and washed dishes. It looked something like the giant warp wall on the show “Ninja Warriors.” It was about ten feet high and just as wide. It was made with long, curved plywood, and a thin platform topped it off. The thing took up a huge portion of my yard. My teenagers loved running up it and sitting on the platform, overlooking our neighborhood.
I hated it.
I hated it because it represented a memory that soured in my mind every time I thought of it.
After laboring for a few difficult years in the cold, hard, fields of a small Northern town, my husband Thomas and I had finally managed to gather a small group and start meeting on Sundays. After a few years of struggling with rejection and financial difficulties, we were finally moving into position to see our vision of a church plant come to pass.
We lacked one major ingredient: a worship leader.
We met a man at a pastors conference I’ll call James Smith. He was a truly gifted worship leader! We were chatting together after a session, and James invited us to have lunch with him and his three kids. We enjoyed getting to know this single dad. The next year we visited, James told us he had not stopped thinking about our lunch discussions. He was inspired by our story and felt led by God to join us in our new work in Michigans snow-covered Upper Peninsula.
Someone wants to come and help us in the middle of nowhere?!! And a worship leader? That was a miracle!
James stepped down from the church in Minnesota where he was currently ministering in preparation to move.
Soon, His former pastor called us. “Hey, you guys are involved in a new church plant, you don’t want to bring this guy on. He’s a handful.”
We were needy, and we thought “Naw… No one so kind, so gifted musically, and so willing to move to our little village in the North, could be bad.”
A few months later, James and his two young girls and teen son were residing in our home. Together we enjoyed great fellowship and worship music while our kids played together all around us. James’ oldest, Darren, worked with his father to create the large wooden ram for his trick bike riding.
We expected our young congregation to begin flourishing with an anointed musician like James alongside of us. And yet…from the time he came along, instead of our church growing and exploding in new members, our church began to shrink. The offering, which once was a constantly surprising source of provision, began to dry up. Even some of the teenagers, who had recently found the Lord and been excited about their new faith, became as scarce as a Bobcat sightings.
Something was wrong. But we couldn’t figure it out. On our end, everything seemed wonderful. God had just began to work, pouring out His spirit on the teens and young adults, and bringing James, and suddenly, everything halted.
Finally, my husband called one of the families that had not attended in a few weeks to ask what was happening.
They hemmed and hawed, before finally admitting that James had come over and told them all about what terrible people my husband and I were. James had told the family he saw how we “really were” because, after all, he lived with us now. The things he shared were as warped as the bike ramp in my yard. He took jokes we told and twisted them to make us look crazy. He claimed my husbands propensity to seek me for advice at times was because Thomas secretly believed I was the very voice of God. He told the family our household was totally out of order. He acted like this was a grave secret and asked for “prayer” because he “didn’t know what to do.”
It didn’t end there. We soon learned he had gone to every single person, including the new believers and teens, individually, and told them whatever lie he thought would most enrage the person. A different story and offense was told to each one. Each person was told “not to tell anyone…” even though James shared atrocious lies far and wide in our small town of 2000. A town so small, any gossip would quickly spread and devour a persons reputation as quick as a spreading forest fire in the summers heat.
Like we had done, the people we ministered to thought: “Naw… No one so kind, so gifted musically, so willing to move to our little village in the North, could be bad.” James came across as friendly, kind, and caring. We had been totally deceived ourselves! We soon realized James had designs on the church and wanted to take over what we had started and make it his own. He moved out and started a Bible study with those who once attended our church while we sat home, alone, questioning our ability to continue the work.
It was not long before James’ attempt at starting a church floundered and failed. In a very short time his true colors emerged. Rejected by the people, one fall day he and his offspring disappeared before the first snow flakes dropped.
There were still a handful of people committed to the church we started, but by now it had but a faint heartbeat.
My own heart was dark and cold from the hatred that kept surging through my mind every single time I saw the ramp, left behind like so much carnage in the Smith’s wake.
I have to go off on a little tangent here because God was so kind to meet us in this time. I want to share how God, despite our battle with unforgiveness, came through.
We canceled our services and the rental we had obtained for those purposes. My husband declared we would stop everything and fast and pray together once a week until God did something…
About four beleaguered, but dedicated people joined us at the first prayer meeting. With heavy hearts we joined hands and prayed. As we prayed, a picture emerged in my mind. I saw a broken down, stone, foundation. Like you might see on an old barn. And one of the stones had a bunch of eyes, looking all around. Yep. Eyes. It was the oddest thing. Even comical. I also had the impression a “Janitor was coming” to clean it all up, and re-lay a new foundation. I shared about the foundation and the janitor, with our small group, but I left off the weird “eyes” so they would take me seriously.
The next day I happened to be reading Zechariah 3. Verse 9 says “See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone…” I had to put my bible down and kneel with my face to the floor. Surely God had met with us at prayer! I repented for not sharing all he had given me! The whole chapter of Zechariah 3 was about clean clothes and fresh starts. Clearly, that was what God wanted us to know. He was going to build a new “Temple” on a new, firm foundation.
After a year of prayer, a fresh group of young adults came along and found Jesus. It was the beginning of a new church that is still alive today, even though we left the area many years ago now.
But even as God was re-laying the new foundation, I was still seething at James. He had moved to another state while we were stuck with a giant wooden ramp and a badly damaged reputation. The ramp came to represent all the rubbish left behind in my heart. It was heavy, immovable, and unbreakable. Like the sludge growing in my soul, unforgiveness was threatening to choke out my life.
I knew it was wrong. I tried not to think about the things that angered me. Then I’d see that dumb ramp. I cried out to God for help! I read scripture after scripture about forgiveness, like this story in Matthew 18: 21-35
21 Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone[a] who sins against me? Seven times?”
22 “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven![b]
23 “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. 24 In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars.[c] 25 He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.
26 “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ 27 Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
28 “But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars.[d] He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.
29 “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. 30 But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.
31 “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. 32 Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34 Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.
Jesus concluded with:
35 “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters[e] from your heart.”
I knew this story was ME. I was forgiven when, as a rebellious youth, God came in and gave me a new life. In fact, I would likely have died very young otherwise. I still remember before I found the Lord constantly rehashing the pain I had caused people, trying to justify my bad behaviors. I was on a bad path, and my heart condemned me. Then I accepted Jesus into my life, and I was forgiven! Finally I understood, the relief I was seeking when I justified my sinful life, was found in acknowledging what a sinner I was! And receiving the glorious gift of forgiveness! Yet here I was, mentally beating up someone who was no longer around, and most likely could care less about how I felt.
The unforgiveness was like a large python, wrapping me up tighter and tighter suffocating the life out of me, zapping my strength to serve God as I desired. I repented over and over, but the feelings refused to budge.
I didn’t know where James had gone, but in unrelenting anger one day I sat down and composed a long letter to him. In the letter I went over every single thing he had said and did that was wrong and why, and how it had hurt us and the work for God we were trying to accomplish.
I outlined each offense, one by one, on notebook paper until I had filled nine pages. There. I thought, pulling the paper from it’s spiral binding and giving it a tri-fold before placing it in an envelope. It’s out of my mind and onto the paper. Now, one day, when I learn where that man is I will give it to him!
I hoped writing it all out of my troubled mind would free me from the pythons grasp. I didn’t have to mentally rehash each wrong any more. But I was still not released. I simply knew now where to find all the information that I was trying to forget.
I thought to myself “I could get over this if ONLY I didn’t have to look at that ramp. It’s right there in front of me every day. James left without taking it down and now we are stuck! Even a sledge hammer wouldn’t affect the thick wooden monstrosity. It was built well, we had to admit that. We didn’t have the money to hire someone, and we were too busy to figure it ourselves.
Ah. But doesn’t God at times put giant ramps before us? If I could have looked away the bitterness in my soul might have remained hidden in a dark corner, spinning webs of death and destruction, slowly sucking my blood while I pretended all was fine. Instead, I had to face the ramp and I was forced to deal with the hatred I harbored.
One summer day, the kids were outside playing in the hose, while I sipped iced lemonade. Per usual, I glowered at the ramp directly next to them despising it’s creators. I thought “It would be a perfect day outside, enjoying the laughter and sunshine except I have to see… that thing!!”
And the thickness of my anger was shocking even to myself. It was so dark and slimy. It weighed me down like the chains Ebeneezer Scrooges’ partner, Jacob Marley, lugged around.
I finally couldn’t bear it any longer
While the girls giggled under a spray of cool water I turned and marched inside. I found my small sons fat toddler-size crayons. I chose black on purpose.Then, I took the long letter from my shelf with its many pages of offense, and across each page I inscribed the word “FORGIVEN.”
Over and over, in a desperate fury, I pressed down hard and insistently, writing in a large scrawl that filled the page “Forgiven. Forgiven. Forgiven.”
I completed the mission and held the pages up to God and yelled “I Forgive him!”
Then I placed it back in the envelope and back on my shelf. I chose to forgive. I had been waiting for a sense of love or new understanding. I wanted God to miraculously wash my anger with His compassion. That had not happened.
Nope. To survive, I had to make a choice. I chose to obey the mandate I knew existed:
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
From that day forward, whenever I thought of some incident that angered or upset me, I would tell that thought “I forgave him.” I chose to take the unforgiving thought captive and step on its ugly head. I did not FEEL forgiving. It was a ruthless, mental decision to tell my emotions they would not reign over me.
I had to. The weight of unforgiveness was too much to bear.
One day, as summer greens turned to autumn golds. I found myself gazing from my window at the tall ramp. And I felt… nothing. There was no anger. No sadness. No unforgiveness.
It was gone. My feelings had at last caught up with my decision.
And I went back to the letter that day. I lit a small fire outside, and without so much as a peek in the envelope, I ceremoniously burned the entire thing.
My kids enjoyed many fun hours through the years as they ran up the ramp, grabbing its ledge and flipping onto the platform. Neighborhood kids came over to join them. I loved seeing them sitting in a line atop it, sharing secrets or singing silly songs. The ramp weathered after a few winters, and the wood turned grey and splintered. We held a demo-day and a group of young men from church had a blast tearing it down.
Decades have gone by. James never reappeared, and I have no idea where he is. Forgiveness, like my Lord’s gift of salvation, is there for the taking. But one must come and get it to receive it.
It is this story from my life, that has instructed me the most about forgiveness. I refer to it in my mind when some minor or major offense is hurled my way.
*Choose to forgive, and one day, the feelings will follow.
*Obey God’s Word, whether you feel like doing that or not.
*Don’t let forgiveness slither into your heart. Stop the thoughts before they stop you!
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