Have the Funeral - Part I.

Kev and I have been listening to an amazing teaching series by Dr. James MacDonald.
It's called "Have the Funeral - God's Plan for Your Past."

It's a two part series where he compares forgiveness to funerals.
The first part is entitled "The Wake - Viewing Unforgiveness the Way God Does;"
and Part Two is called "The Burial - Making Forgiveness Final."

At funerals, there are two important things that we do.
We grieve and we leave.
There is a crisis and there is a process of grieving that takes place.

When we are injured - when we get wounded, there's the crisis.
The hurt, the pain, the broken dream, the loss, the "what will never be" crisis happens. And just like at a funeral, we need to view it, and we need to grieve it. What should have, could have, and would have been has got to be let go of if we are to ever move forward.

If healing is to ever take place - we must begin the process of forgiving - We must do an inventory of the injury and the wounding...and then we need to make a conscious choice to gather all that hurt up and have the funeral.

Sounds easy. Sounds like a simple two step process. Sounds like a "that's easy for you to say, but you have no idea what's happened to me in my life" kind of a story.

It's not.
But Jesus had much to say about forgiveness and it would behoove me to listen - Matthew 18; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:37; the Lord's Prayer...

The harsh reality of it all is that many people will never be able to repair the damage that they have done to us. They are not going to be able to fix the hurt that they have done - and sadly, they may never even care or seek to try. Some may have no idea the amount of pain that they have ever even caused.

"Don't expect the people who need to be forgiven to properly calculate what they owe."

So, the pastor's challenge to us is not to hold our death grips on the only verse in scripture that qualifies "IF the person repents...THEN I will forgive," but to read all of the many other verses that call for immediate, unilateral forgiveness - regardless of how the offender acts. The debt has to be paid - there was injury that has taken place.

But forgiveness releases that person from their debt. We absorb it. We cover it. We decide to release the person from the obligation that resulted from the injury.

Time does not heal all wounds. Only forgiveness does.

And forgiving people are FORGIVEN people.
If we forgive, we will be forgiven.
The Lord's prayer is prayed - "Forgive us - like we forgive others."
Pretty heavy when you think about it...
I will be forgiven the way that I forgive.

John 13:17 - "If you know these things...happy are you if you DO them."
Much easier said than done, though.
Knowing the right thing to do is only half the battle.

The fact of the matter is that if we profess to know and love Christ, then we need to become "professional forgivers." By this ALL men will know you are My disciples if you have LOVE for one another. Forgiveness is the litmus test of the love that we pretend to profess. Others are watching to see how we live out in relationship to others what we profess.

It's all banking on - can we extend the forgiveness that we say we have received?
Are we really different?
If we only need Christ's forgiveness for ourselves but can't extend it to others - how real is this Christianity that we profess?

Hard, messy, painful, reality....
Harsh truth to digest.

Jesus forgive us for trashing your Name - for muddying the waters for others to see.
More to come.....