HAVE I BEEN EDUCATED?
by Carolyn Caines
If I learn my ABCs, can read 600 words per minute, and can write with perfect penmanship, but have not been shown how to communicate with the Designer of all language …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can deliver an eloquent speech and persuade you with my stunning logic, but have not been instructed in God’s wisdom…. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I read Shakespeare and John Locke and can discuss their writings with keen insight, but have not read the greatest of all books — the Bible — and have no knowledge of its personal importance… I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I have memorized addition facts, multiplication tables, and chemical formulas, but have never been disciplined to hide God’s Word in my heart …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can explain the law of gravity and Einstein’s theory of relativity, but have never been instructed in the unchangeable laws of the One Who orders our universe …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can classify animals by their family, genus and species, and can write a lengthy scientific paper that wins an award, but have not been introduced to the Maker’s purpose for all creation, …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can recite the Gettyburg Address and the Preamble to the Constitution, but have not been informed of the hand of God in the history of our country …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can play the piano, the violin, six other instruments, and can write music that moves men to tears, but have not been taught to listen to the Director of the universe and worship Him, … I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can run cross-country races, star in basketball and do 100 push-ups without stopping, but have never been shown how to bend my spirit to do God’s will …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I can identify a Picasso, describe the style of da Vinci, and even paint a portrait that earns an A+, but have not learned that all harmony and beauty comes from a relationship with God, …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I were to graduate with a perfect 4.0 and am accepted at the best university with a full scholarship, but have not been guided into a career of God’s choosing for me, …. I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
If I become a good citizen, voting at each election and fighting for what is moral and right, but have not been told of (or believe) the sinfulness of man and his hopelessness without Christ,… I HAVE NOT BEEN EDUCATED.
However, if one day I see the world as God sees it, and come to know Him, Whom to know is life eternal, and glorify God by fulfilling His purpose for me, THEN I HAVE BEEN EDUCATED!
Shared to M.E. by Bing Alabata.
HOW CAN WE BE SPIRITUAL IN A MODERN WORLD
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We say of a fellow church member who is thoughtful, committed, prayerful, and attentive to others that he or she is spiritual, yet we know that the meaning of spiritual is not exhausted by those attitudes or behaviors. Seventh-day Adventists treasure such spiritual classics as Steps to Christ and The Desire of Ages, but to be spiritual certainly means more than to have regular devotional reading habits. Adventist Christians have shown special skill in defining and defending biblical doctrines and beliefs. But we haven’t found it nearly so easy to describe our spiritual lives–experiences that by their very nature are intimate, personal, and subjective. Some Christians have pointed out that spirituality can’t be defined logically, and they are probably right. Can we adequately express the breadth or depth of love, joy, or anger on a piece of paper? Not unless you are far more gifted than I am. We know what these powerful emotions are only as we experience them. Here’s the conundrum: Writing about spirituality doesn’t get us very far forward in understanding what it is or how it functions in our lives. Like all human qualities, emotions, and experiences, it is best understood in the context of what happens to us in our daily lives.
Soon afterward I played the song for a group of Australian Adventist ministers. Their reactions were virtually identical to those of the students. Then I invited a group of people who have worked on the land most of their lives to listen to the song. There was hardly a dry eye in the room. Interestingly, there were some in each group who didn’t experience the response of the majority. Questioning revealed that all who weren’t particularly moved by the song had either grown up outside Australia or had lived most of their formative years in a city. It didn’t take too much imagination to work out what was happening. For those in the groups who had experienced the struggles of life in the Australian bush–who knew its pain and its frustration and who knew something of the dogged perseverance that it took to survive and thrive in that environment–the song called forth a spiritual response. Those who had little prior experience of the events and scenes described in the song couldn’t respond in the same way. A Spirituality of Everyday Life It’s particularly important that we grasp that authentic Christian spirituality can be lived only in the context of real-life experiences. What is the point of a spirituality that is unrelated to actual living in the world, in which practitioners learn only to avoid the environment in which God has allowed them to be planted? Associating the spiritual life with monks, hermits, and people who have separated themselves from the cut and thrust of life has excused millions of Christians from living the life to which Jesus has called each of us. Spirituality came to be linked, especially in the medieval world, to those who somehow rose “above the world” and practiced rigorous self-denial and asceticism. While I won’t diminish the authentic value of what many of those people experienced in their practices, I’m convinced that there is a greater kind of spirituality needed in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Authentic spirituality emerges from engagement, not avoidance. It is alive and dynamic, not silent and dead. A Spirituality of the Desert
If you want to know what it is to be spiritual, then you have to give God a chance to say things to you that usually get lost in the clamor and stress of “normal” life. Remember that in addition to His 40 days in the wilderness Jesus often spent time with His Father in prayer. He recognized the need to routinely separate Himself from His family and nearest friends in order to build the spiritual resources that He needed to maintain His ministry. His spirituality was not accidental or haphazard. He was intentional about it, and endeavored to teach His disciples to be the same. They, unfortunately, were slow learners. Not until they experienced the trauma of His betrayal, scourging, and death did they begin to understand the depth of His relationship with His Father and with them. Only then did they realize their own need for that kind of relationship. Spirituality in the Modern World
Jesus took His message and His person to the people. He ate with the people, walked with the people, cried with the people, rejoiced with the people. He slept in their homes, fished in their boats, raised their dead, and healed their hurts. He wasn’t some wandering ascetic who didn’t know what it meant to go in to God and out to the people. He didn’t practice an exclusive monasticism, but a genuinely integrated spirituality. His was a spirituality that illustrated His relationship with God through the everyday experiences of His life. Using Jesus as our example, Christians learn that a viable and vibrant spirituality in the modern world can’t be separated from all that life is. Authentic Christian spirituality: 1. Must influence the journey of life and faith that we are walking day by day, and must learn from each day’s journey. 2. Will change and mature as we meet the challenges, frustrations, and joys of life. A static spirituality is like a fossilized tree: it resembles the real thing, but gives no fruit, offers no shade, and provides no joy to the beholder. 3. Will be ours and ours alone. We can’t sit in judgment on the spirituality of another, nor on the way in which another person experiences and expresses his or her spirituality. 4. Will take time out to be disciplined.* What is spirituality? A specific answer may still elude us. But if we understand that Adventist Christian spirituality in the modern world must grow from communion with God in the “desert” and find its expression in everyday life, we will be well on the way to finding our own answers. No aspect of our spirituality can function without its balancing component. Each well-lived life needs both the desert and the highway, solitude and engagement. Taken together, they complement and help to build us into men and women who find a deep joy in Jesus Christ and have a great blessing to offer the modern world. _________________________ _________________________
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hat is Spirituality? T
Let me illustrate. The Australian balladist John Williamson wrote a song called “Galleries of Pink Galahs.” It’s about experiencing the struggles of living in the Australian bush. I shared it with a group of third- and fourth-year theology students one day at Avondale College in a class called Contemporary Religion in Australia. That class period turned out to be a milestone in my understanding of the nature of spirituality, not primarily because of the content of the song itself, but because of the reactions of the class members to the song. I had previously felt the song’s impact when I listened to it by myself, but I was still surprised when students began to reveal their own reactions to the moving ballad. Many (but not all) said that the experience they had while listening to that song was almost mystical. Some went so far as to actually call it a “spiritual experience.”
Just as there is no substitute for both quantity and quality time in building a secure, functional relationship between parent and child, there can be no substitute for time spent in communion with God in order to maintain a friendship with Him. If your spiritual experience is lagging somewhat–if joy seems far away, and you are tempted to avoid the One toward whom you normally would run–chances are you haven’t had a recent “desert experience” with God. This may be your signal that you need to take special time with Him. Your desert might be in a forest of gnarled old gum trees, or in a spring garden; on a mountaintop, or in a verdant valley. God may catch up with you as you ride a wave on a beautiful summer’s morning, or as you look up at the stars on a cold winter’s night. Source: http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=144
SERVING CHRIST FOR REAL
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 HAVE SEEN TRAGIC, BROKEN LIVES IN various forms: Poor, landless workers terribly exploited by wealthy landowners; children engaged in heavy manual labor for less than $l a day; girls as young as 12 taken from remote rural villages and pressed into the sex industry; people, young and old, suffering slow and agonizing deaths from AIDS; nomadic herders who have seen their livelihoods shrivel during years of relentless drought. But I never witnessed the evil, unyielding hand of starvation slowly strangling the life away from infants less than 6 months old. Not until this day, and, unfortunately, many days since.
These children lived in a damp, cold, colorless institution. They had no mothers, no family; except for the dozens of other children in the guardianship of frighteningly few caregivers. Desperate families unable to feed their children had delivered them to the orphanage, but often they had arrived too late. Chronic undernutrition had made their young bodies susceptible to a range of illnesses such as pneumonia. And often, even with the best care, they had no hope. Survival for the lucky few meant a lifetime struggle against illness and reduced mental capacity. For many, there was only a torturous, inevitable wait for the end of a very short life. Too Little, Too Late I first witnessed starvation in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea), but it is a story repeated again and again around the world, particularly in the poorest countries of Africa.
Health care is a half day’s walk away, and often there are no medicines available once you get there. AIDS is bad enough, but now children suffer from malaria. Thousands die from it each day. There is no reason for this, as it is completely manageable at very low cost. The margins of survival are extraordinarily narrow. Across the globe 20,000 people will die today from illnesses that are utterly treatable. This does not include people dying from war, accidents, or other complicated or incurable illnesses. These are just the ones who will die simply because they are too poor to live. And we can stop it. For the first time in history, our generation has the means to rid the world of this human tragedy. But do we have the will? As Christians the answer to this question should be simple. We must have the will. In fact, those who claim to be followers of Christ have a responsibility to aid the poor and suffering around us. God of Shining Lights Land, said the directives, belonged to God. Land transactions should be treated differently between rural and urban areas, and rural lands must be returned to their original owners every 50 years. The market value for land was based on the proximity of the transaction to the next jubilee year. Interest could not be charged to the poor. Labor transactions could occur if a person fell into poverty, but the person could not be made a slave–they had to be paid a fair salary, and their property had to be returned in the jubilee year. In short, these rules served as a safety net to ensure that the poor would not be in danger of falling into absolute poverty and could not be exploited by the wealthy. God commanded it. In Leviticus 19:9, 10 God directed the Israelites to leave a portion behind in their fields when harvesting in order that the poor could also gather food. In Deuteronomy 15:11 God directed His people to be openhanded toward the poor and needy. The message was repeated consistently throughout the Old Testament. In Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah God continued to remind the Israelites of the special place He has in His heart for the poor. His people were expected to act toward them with justice and mercy. In fact, the Bible talks as much about care for the poor as it does about the Sabbath, avoiding the worship of idols, and other key theological points. Let’s return to the issue of praise and worship. We all know that God endorses worship very highly. But take a look at Isaiah 58.* Here God tells Isaiah to “shout it aloud. . . . Declare to my people their rebellion. . . . For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God” (verses 1, 2). The passage goes on to describe them as people eager for God to come near them, who have humbled themselves in their worship, but God appears to have neglected them. God answers their calls with a description of their sins and gives the reason they cannot expect their voices to be heard on high (verse 4). They have been exploiting their workers, quarreling, and fighting. They bow their heads on their day of fasting, and make themselves look humble and pious. But that’s not what God wanted. He wanted them “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke,” and “to share [their] food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter–when [they saw] the naked, to clothe him, and not turn away from [their] own flesh and blood” (verses 6, 7). God actually suggested that if they worshipped Him while behaving unjustly or without mercy, their prayers wouldn’t even get off the ground! (See this passage in The Message.) Isaiah 58:8-14 describes what would happen to His people–and to us–if they acted in accordance with His will by serving the poor and disenfranchised. What a powerful witness we could be today if we followed this simple formula and became known as “those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again” (verse 12, The Message). One Poor God Read the following verses in the Gospels: Matthew 8:20; Luke 12:15-21; Luke 14:13, 21; Luke 16:19-31; read Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:17-49). Reflect again on the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37); contrast the two stories of the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-30) and Zacchaeus the tax collector (Luke 19:1-10) and consider Jesus’ reaction to each of these two individuals’ responses to the needs of the poor. Many other stories in the Gospels speak of Jesus’ love for and solidarity with the poor and suffering. A Challenge Worthy of Our Generation But is this not salvation by works? Actually, no, it isn’t. This is no ambiguous parable with layered meanings. Jesus described Himself as being embodied in the poor and the suffering. The implications of this simple statement are colossal, and their link to salvation makes them impossible to ignore. We are saved by grace the moment we accept the gift offered to us. However, if Jesus is truly embodied within the poor, we cannot neglect the needs of the poor and suffering on earth now. We cannot maintain that we care about Jesus if we turn our backs on Him as He is embodied in the person of the poor and suffering. By grace we are saved, in His love we dwell, but our service to others witnesses to the world that we are saved. The Golden Rule
Recently I was talking to a friend about Christianity. He explained that Christian churches could never really embrace the central role of service in their missions at a corporate level, because this would require giving up their competitive advantage in winning new members. I would counter by suggesting that in today’s postmodern society, in which practical relevance must be demonstrated, not until we embrace our responsibilities to aid the poor as individual Christians and congregations will we have the power to fulfill the Great Commission that was witnessed during the times of the early church. Ellen White made this observation more than 100 years ago: “When those who profess the name of Christ shall practice the principles of the golden rule, the same power will attend the gospel as in apostolic times” (Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 137). Wherever we are, whatever we do, we can exercise the golden rule toward those who have greater needs than our own. We needn’t make it a profession or a career; we don’t have to give up our lives in this cause. Even giving money is secondary to the core task God has given to us: active participation in individual and group action to aid the poor and needy. (Still, giving greatly assists those who have chosen service as their career, enabling them to have a greater impact with consolidated resources in parts of the world where the fortunate are few. The lessons they learn about the alleviation of poverty thus strengthen the broader, global community.) My vision does not involve growing and evolving aid agencies to solve the needs of the world, because this is not possible without active solidarity from the wealthy and powerful. But the biblical call to action and intervention on behalf of the poor does not suggest that we can avoid our responsibilities through giving money, nor does it require guilt-ridden self-sacrifice to the point of creating our own poverty (even the story of the rich young ruler is, arguably, not actually about this). Rather, my vision is of Christians around the world, actively engaged in the cause for social justice toward those less favored in their own communities, towns, cities, and countries. One of the Old Testament prophets asked rhetorically, “And what does the Lord require of you?” His answer: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). God asks no more; and certainly no less. By His grace I am saved, in His love I will dwell, and by my service I will bear witness to the fact that I am saved. Be challenged to get your church groups together and get out there to serve the Lord wherever He can be found! There is no greater cause. _________________________ |
In some villages in Malawi there are very few men or women of working age. One could sensibly conclude that they are away working, perhaps in the fields or in the city. But they are dead–not from war, but AIDS, one of the most insidious diseases affecting the world today. Around the world 8,000 people will die from it today. The economic ramifications on countries ravaged by AIDS are enormous, but the consequences on the family are dire. Children with no parents are taken in by grandparents. Some of them care for five, 10, even 15 orphaned children. Few are left to the tireless work of tending crops planted in depleted and marginal soils characterized by years of unsustainable management owing to a shortage of energy or tradable resources.
When people take the name of Christ and call themselves Christians, but in their life they deny the character of the eternal Giver to those most in need, that brand of Christianity ceases to have any real power in today’s world.Source: http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=132
IN A PANIC
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BY STEVE NEUMANN
First Pain But the thought of heart disease gnawed at me. After all, my diet was not perfect. I was a bit overweight, and there was always more exercise I could do. But however much I sought to manage my health, very slowly over several years the secret little fear I had about my heart insidiously ate into my mind. My nighttime hours became difficult. I would awaken with chest pain. I often experienced a strange sense of dread and foreboding. This dread became all mixed up with my relationship to God. I tried to put my worries into His strong hands. I tried to “trust” it all away, but the pain and dread persisted. I began taking my own blood pressure, but it was always normal. A serious search for the cause of my chest pain began. My physician father tried to help me. At his suggestion I went to see a gastroenterologist. His diagnosis was a mild case of GERD, or gastroesophageal reflux disease, known as recurring heartburn. Acid from the stomach gets into the esophagus; the effects can be painful and can mimic a heart attack. I was thrilled to have a name for my pain. Treatment began. I faithfully took my acid-blocking medication. “You’re Going to Die!” When I didn’t die the next day, I refused to be comforted. An even greater anxiety gathered power within me. I’m insane, I thought. I need to be in a padded room wearing a straitjacket. My wife was a nurse who worked nights. Often when she was gone, I would lie in bed and meditate about the possibility of my insanity. A terrible prospect entered my mind: What if one of these nights I lose control of myself and harm my children? These thoughts would wash over me during the darkest hours of the night. I seriously considered tying myself down to my bed. I was becoming unhinged. My mind was failing me. The Attack Deep in my soul I knew that the time for my death had arrived. My wife was at work, my children were sleeping peacefully, and I was dying all alone in the middle of the night. The most inexpressible horror swept over me. I cannot describe the awfulness of that “death” experience. Much later, in discussing this incident with my father, I learned that this “moment of death” is the most horrific aspect of a panic attack. Of course, persons suffering a panic attack do not experience death; however, they experience what may be worse–they experience what they imagine death to be. The remainder of the night of my first panic attack was spent in a cardiac intensive care unit. I remember lying in that hospital bed for many hours with the most severe chest pain imaginable. The doctors gave me large doses of antacids, as well as morphine, but nothing touched the pain. The medical profession was trying to help me; they just didn’t know what was wrong. The initial EKG and blood work done on my admission to the emergency room showed normal heart rhythms and normal blood chemistry. But I felt alone and abandoned. More Testing My father began suggesting to me that my troubles might be caused by a mental illness, specifically, severe anxiety panic disorder. This was hard to believe, since the pain I experienced was so incredibly physical. He continued talking with me over many days in kind and sympathetic tones, gently trying to get me to see something I just couldn’t imagine. I earnestly looked for other reasons to explain my pain. There had to be some explanation. A diseased gallbladder can cause chest pain. I had a gallbladder test; it came back negative. Reluctantly, I began reading up on panic disorders. One book listed questions, the numeric answers to which, when totaled up, indicated the possibility of anxiety panic disease. My score on that simple test brought me face-to-face with a stark truth–I might have a mental illness. Finally I agreed to an examination by a psychiatrist. A Diagnosis I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just been saved from many years of unnecessary pain and suffering. Undiagnosed and untreated, panic disorder can destroy a person’s life. Panic disorder has many “official” symptoms: palpitations, pounding heart, racing heart, sweating, tremor, smothering sensation, shortness of breath, choking sensation, chest pain, nausea, dizziness, derealization, fear of going crazy, fear of dying, paresthesia (tingling skin), or hot flashes. Many other symptoms may exist for any particular person. An important “unofficial” symptom is just feeling really, really rotten. Pursuing Pain
My father, an old-timey doctor, now retired, has talked with me extensively about his early days in medicine. He was taught, and always made it his practice, never to stop searching for the cause of a patient’s pain, or leave a patient in pain. A person with panic disorder must find a physician who will resolutely pursue the case. It is best to search for a doctor who treats many patients with panic disorder. An accurate diagnosis of panic disorder may take years and multiple visits to many different doctors. The cruel reality of this disease is the separation it creates between the sufferer and other people. After all, the person with panic is perfectly aware of the stigma attached to some of the psychological symptoms, and so these symptoms are suppressed. And when no cause is found for the physical symptoms, what can a person with panic do, except become more anxious? Getting Proper Treatment Since my wife is a nurse and my father a physician, I did not experience the isolation that often accompanies panic. Both my wife and my father offered me steady consolation, and good advice. I cannot emphasize enough how unusual my experience has been in finding proper treatment so quickly. I was pain-free in a matter of weeks after a correct diagnosis. Panic disorder is so insidious and debilitating that even a proper diagnosis will sometimes fail to satisfy a person’s desire to comprehend. After all, what is the physical evidence for the disease? Persons may engage in a lifetime of search for the real cause of their symptoms. Consequences Panic disorder has led me to a deeper dependence upon God. I know that I can still suffer all sorts of ailments in the future, both physical and spiritual, but I know that when I cry out for His help, He is listening. Even though I may walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for He is with me. This promise describes a different kind of death experience than I had in my panic attack. Yes, the living know that they shall die, but they need to let go of their imaginings about death. I know that my health and salvation are in His hands, no matter what fears my mind may present. The power of panic disorder comes from within the sufferer. That is the bizarre characteristic that makes panic disorder a vicious invention of the devil. He wants us isolated from each other, and the church body. I was saved by loved ones. Now whom can we save? _________________________ |
Y NAME IS NOT REALLY STEVE Neumann. I wouldn’t mind telling you my name if you knew more about me and about my disease. The reason I want to tell my experience is simple. The thought that someone is now going through what I did, but alone and helpless, saddens me deeply. If possible, I want to help stop that suffering. We have no greater obligation to help others than in the same way we ourselves have been helped. 
Things only got worse. With greater frequency a voice would rise up inside me and say with great authority, “Tomorrow you are going to die!” The terrifying prediction seemed incontrovertible, destined. It was going to happen. The Bible says that God knows the day of our birth and the day of our death. Well, I knew when I was born. I guess I thought God was letting me in on the secret of my end as well. It gives me great comfort to realize that God doesn’t ordinarily tell His people the day of their death. Such information is strictly on a need-to-know basis. How kind of Him to keep us in the dark about so many things! I wish I knew less than I do about many things. Source: http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=72
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIPS
The Key To Why They Work . . . And Why They Fail
By Earnie Larsen
When we talk about the psychology of relationships, we mean all types, not only sexual ones: relationships with your kids, parents, friends, any type of relationship. The psychology is the heart and soul of relationships. Many of you might be familiar with it, but it doesn’t hurt to go through it again and get to where you know it so well you can teach it.
The little diagram I often use with relationships is a tightrope. The point is this—the rope cannot be stronger than the poles. The first issue in a relationship is not the rope; it’s how strong the poles are. What if one pole is made out of iron and buried in ten feet of concrete, and the other pole is cardboard and buried in four inches of sand? How much weight can the rope hold? If you put any weight on that rope relating to in-laws, to sex, to money, or to kids, then it caves right in. You can go to a counselor and spend a million dollars talking about the issues, but that’s the wrong place to start. The only way a relationship gets stronger is if both people are willing first of all to look at themselves.
We are going to go through six words which relate to relationships. They are the key to what makes a relationship work and what makes it fail.
Both
A relationship cannot be healthier than both people. First of all, both must want the relationship to exist. Because you are in the relationship does not automatically mean that both of you want the same kind of relationship. Do you have teenage kids? What if you want an honest, caring, sharing, loving, wonderful relationship with your teenage kid and they want to have a place to eat and sleep and a place to take off from? Then you don’t want the same kind of relationship. It doesn’t make any difference what you want. It can’t be any healthier than what both people want.
You may find that somebody you are in a relationship with wants to be a hermit. “I want to have a place to stay; don’t bug me; I’ll just sit here and read my paper and drink my beer, watch TV; don’t hassle me.” Yet, you may want something more like a community.
Another example could be a relationship with your parents. You may be fifty years old, and what your parents want in a relationship with you is that you be bonded. “I don’t want you to curl your hair. I want you to sit up straight at the table.” You probably want different things. The first issue from a counselor’s standpoint is to clarify what it is that both people want. You often find that both people want different things.
Willing
How willing are both people to do what it takes to make the relationship better? Not just willing to do what they, themselves, want. That’s not the issue. The issue is willing to do what it takes. If what it takes to make your relationship healthier is for you to be quiet and listen, are you wiling to listen? If what it takes for your relationship to be healthier is for somebody to talk straight, are you willing to do that?
How willing are you to do what it takes to make the relationship better? If either one says, “I’m not going to do anything. There’s nothing wrong with our relationship except you anyway. If you weren’t so nuts, everything would be fine. Maybe you’ll get yourself fixed and everything will be all right.” If both people aren’t willing to do it, you’ve got a lot of trouble.
Those of you who have started a journey toward growth on a program without the other person, are going to have a lot of hurt in your life. Imagine two pimples with bubbles on top. If one person starts growing and starts moving, knowing what friendship is, what sharing is, what support is, what talking straight is, what happens? If you start growing it means you are growing further and further apart from the other. There are only three things which can happen. The best is that the other person has a conversion experience and starts changing and comes along with you. That can happen. Another thing that can happen is this person who is growing can’t stand up to the pressure of the other person saying things like: “I remember when you used to be a good mother; I remember when you used to be nice before you got brainwashed.” When this happens they often tend to give up their recovery and go back to the way it was. But you can never do that. Once you know the difference, you can never go back. You can try, but it won’t work. The third thing which happens is that sooner or later, the bubble breaks. Relationships are living things just like people, and any living thing can die. When relationships are dead, they are gone and they are never going to come back because they are dead. I see a lot of people trying to do what seems like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for a corpse. When it’s dead, it’s over. What it dies from is lack of trust, lack of trying, lack of wanting. Some of the saddest stuff I have found in my twenty years of working with this kind of thing is somebody played with the relationship so long that it died.
Then, once a relationship dies, the other person who was not willing to try before ahs the conversion experience. Then he sits in my office crying. “Tell me what I can do!” And, of course, there is nothing he can do. “I’ll read your books.” “Wonderful!” “I’ll take you out to a movie.” “Super! I don’t want to go out with you.” Tears come down and the guy or lady knows that it is gone, that they played with it too long and it died.
Maybe there are some people reading this under duress. You think it is stupid, and you’re doing it to appease somebody. Realize that someone really wants you to read this because they are hungry. If they get hungry enough, long enough, you’ve lost that relationship.
Able
To make relationships work it takes skills. Good-will is not enough. Lacking the skills, it just won’t work. There are a million examples of this. You understand that all the time in the business world. If you were the boss of a computer place and I came in and wanted a job, you’d say, “Do you know about computers?” I reply, “No, I don’t know anything about them, but I want the job.” You say, “Are you willing to learn?” “No.” “Well, then you don’t have a job.” I’d say, “No, you don’t understand, I just want to work.”
Somebody’s saying, “I really want you to be able to talk.” You say, “I talk to you all the time . . . get me a beer; what’s on TV?; set the alarm for six.” If you are not willing to learn and to work to gain the skills that it takes, give it enough time, it will fall over dead.
Trust
I suggest to you that the only issue I think there is in any relationship is trust. A relationship cannot fail except if trust fails. The only reason a relationship ever dies is because of no trust. People talk about communication. Communication is trust in asking. You cannot have a failure in communication until first of all there is a failure in trust. When games start, trust ends. That’s what causes lack of trust—somebody starts playing a game. Maybe they don’t know any better. Maybe the only way they know how to deal with conflict is to get mad. They don’t know how to say, “I don’t understand.” They don’t know how to say, “I have a different opinion.” All they know how to do is get mad, scream, yell, and intimidate. It’s a game.
Screaming and yelling may be the way you learned, and the only way you know, but it isn’t good enough. How willing are you and I to deal with the kind of games we play? Ordinarily when you talk about trust, people think about one or two things—sexual fidelity or not stealing money. Trust means more than that. That’s the bare minimum. When I talk about trust it is where I really know you care about me. Trust means that you have proven to me you will express your caring in ways which count to me. Not in the things that count to you. I can only trust you if you have demonstrated you care enough about me to be present to me in a way which is important to me.
Communication is trusting. The only way two people can build trust is that I take responsibility for myself in learning to be more trustworthy. The first commitment in a relationship is not to the relationship; it is the commitment that both people are willing to bend back and look at themselves.
The question here for each one of us is: what do I need to change in order to become a more trustworthy partner in this relationship? If both people are willing to bend back and look at themselves, and say, “What do I need to change? What do I need to deal with? What do I need to become in order to be a more trustworthy partner?” then there is no end to how much love, trust and grace you can have in this relationship. But if neither is willing to do it, or if only one person is willing to do it, you will continue to have a sick relationship.
Growth or Change
The point is, our task is to grow, in order to become more trustworthy, so that there is more trust in the relationship. If both people are doing that, it just grows and grows. But are you willing to grow? Willing to do some changing? Let me give you an example of this.
The man in this relationship comes from a family of 17 children. The way he came out of his childhood is that any time there is any emotion, he wilts. Whether anger, joy, no matter what—any time there is a lot of emotion, he wilts and goes away. He married a lady who was a child from an alcoholic family whose father left when she was six. She has an enormous fear of abandonment. Any time she feels abandoned, which is almost always, she gets angry and attacks. Let’s look at this pattern. She feels abandoned, gets angry and attacks. He responds by wilting and goes away. The further he goes away, the angrier she gets. So she attacks. He goes away. What does she do? Attacks even more. They have been married 27 years and have seven kids. I don’t think they have had one happy year together!
Let’s work on understanding this. He kept saying, “Why is she so angry?” and she kept saying, “Why is he such a cold duck?” For 27 years they have been doing that. I bet they have spent $30,000 on marriage counseling. But nobody ever said, “Look Mary, what do you have to do?” Finally, she started working in a program down at the YMCA, and decided what was really fair was for her to stop making her husband responsible to make up for the youth she never had. “That isn’t fair. Because my dad left me, it is not my husband’s fault, and I need to stop getting angry because I am afraid.” The husband got in a program and came to understand, “Because I learned to be afraid of a lot of emotion, it isn’t fair to run away from her. If there is an issue and an emotion, the adult, responsible thing to do is to stay there, talk through it, and work through it, and not act like a five-year-old and run for the train or head for the hills.” So, he started staying home and she stopped fighting. They have a wonderful thing going now. It’s not perfect, but both of them made a commitment, first of all, to grow. Both of them told me in the past that, “I don’t know if we are going to make it, but even if we don’t make it I am going to come out of this a healthier, whole person.” Wonderful understanding of what the relationship is about!
You do not grow for the sake of the other person or for the sake of the relationship. That never works because you are angry at the other person because you have to do some work. The only way it works is if you are willing to go to work and do what it takes because you want to change and you want to grow.
My dad committed suicide, and I don’t want to end up like that. I have to work on my life and I choose to work on my life for me. If something happened to my wife and she wasn’t around, would I still be working for my program? Not if I was doing it just for her. In the course of me working on me, I am better able to function in my relationship.
My wife, Paula, of course, comes to our relationship with her bag of stuff. She’s working hard on hers. One of the biggest problems we’ve had in our marriage had to do with time. Being on time. Her whole belief is, “If I get there before it’s over, I am on time.” If church starts at 10:00 and we should leave home at 9:30, and she is in the shower at 9:28, I feel horrid! I feel unimportant, I feel cheated. I feel angry! Paula’s attitude about time was learned when she was growing up. Paula’s mother is a neat lady, but she is always 15 to 20 minutes late. She is 84 years old, and can hardly walk, but she is going as fast as she can trying to make up time. Paula says she just wants to stay alive. Paula really wanted part of her program to be on understanding time. “If something takes a half hour, don’t say it takes 20 because you are going to be 20 minutes late and it’s 7:30 in the morning and you’ll never catch up.” That has been a horrendous issue in our relationship. It only gets better though, if both people are playing fair enough to bend back and say, “What’s fair?” And that means that probably both people are going to have to do some changing.
Program
Nobody changes accidentally. If there is going to be some growth, there needs to be a program. We need to do the right thing. All programs means is practice . . . nothing serious, nothing mystical. A program need practice. For example, how many of you ladies would like to be married to a man who is really good at sharing, who can express his feelings? A woman says, “I want to share a sunset.” “What sunset? I don’t see a sunset!” But if we are playing fair and doing some work, we kind of wake up and say, “Yes there is such a thing as a sunset. There is such a thing as looking at your kid’s face with warmth. There is such a thing as courtesy.” There are all kinds of wonderful things! But waking up to these things is not automatic.
I belong to a men’s group which meets every Saturday morning. There are a lot of guys in the group whose main objective is to learn to feel. A lot of the time guys don’t share feelings because we don’t know we have any. The second thing is to learn how to share those feelings, which is different from ramming them down somebody’s throat. There are a lot of guys in the group who make a journal every day. Every day they write down one feeling. Isn’t that neat? One guy had a piece of paper in a cellophane bag on the seat of his car. He hates red lights. So every time he is stopped by a red light, he takes his chart out and goes through his list, have I felt this?; have I felt this?; have I felt that? He identifies his feelings. He has changed his life and marriage around in the past eighteen months in a way you can’t believe. He’s working at it. You have to identify your feelings and share them with people. Perhaps resolve: “Every day I am going to share one feeling with one person.” It doesn’t have to be any heavy duty thing. I can go to work and say, “Boy, are my feet cold.” You don’t have to gripe and moan and condemn God. Just say, your feet are cold.
It is just a matter of practice. Anybody can learn any skill they want if they are willing to practice. It is skill, not genes. It’s not what you are born with. It is a matter of practice. And it is never too late to change. Some of us simply start later. We can learn the skill.
-Adapted for print from Earnie Larsen’s seminar on adult relationships. Copyright 1986 by Earnie Larsen; used by permission from Marriage Encounter, November/December 1990 issue, pages 24-27.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
by: Author Unknown, Source Unknown
There is a difference between being an acquaintance and being a friend. An acquaintance is someone whose name you know, who you see every now and then, who you probably have something in common with and who you feel comfortable around.
It’s a person that you can invite to your home and share things with. But they are people who you don’t share your life with, whose actions sometimes you don’t understand because you don’t know enough about them.
On the other hand, a friend is someone you love. Not that you are “in love” with them, but you care about them and you think about them when they are not there. The people you are reminded of when you see something they might like, and you know this because you know them so well. They are the people whose pictures you have and whose faces are in your head regardless.
Friends are the people you feel safe around because you know they care about you. They call just to see how you are doing, because a friend doesn’t need an excuse. They tell you the truth, the first time, and you do the same. You know that if you have a problem, they are there to listen.
Friends are the people who won’t laugh at you or hurt you, and if they do hurt you they try hard to make it up to you. They are the people you love, regardless of whether you realize it.
Friends are the people you cried with when you got rejected from colleges and during the last song at the prom and at graduation. They are the people that when you hug them, you don’t think about how long to hug and who’s going to be the first one to let go.
Maybe they are the people that hold the rings at your wedding, or maybe they are the people who give you away at your wedding, or maybe they are the people you marry. Maybe they are the people who cry at your wedding because they are happy or because they are proud.
They are the people who stop you from making mistakes and help you when you do. They are are the people whose hand you can hold, or you can hug or give them a kiss and not have it be awkward because they understand the things you do and they love you for them.
They stick with you and stand by you. They hold your hand. They watch you live and you watch them live and you learn from them. Your life is not the same without them.
http://www.inspirationalstories.com/10/1037.html
BETWEEN SELFISH AND COMMITTED
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 fter a school year and a half of . . .. . . trying to narrow my literary focus, my master’s program has deepened my interest in the Bible. In just a few minutes I will go to hear a renowned theorist talk about what he calls “The Perverse Core of Christianity.” The sun sets at 4:20. The talk begins at 4:00. How long will I stay? The entire time. Will I feel guilty? Am I breaking the Sabbath?
I don’t know–honestly. Fifteen months of public school education has enabled me to easily make excuses for what I do on the Sabbath because no one is around for me to mimic. I use the word “mimic” because that is what I was doing for much of my past Seventh-day Adventist life. There have been enough fellow Adventists everywhere I’ve lived who do the typical Sabbath preparation to keep me faithful. While I was at Andrews University, Sabbath’s coming was obvious. Hallways became temporary rest areas for chairs and other items in the vacuum’s way; gospel music traveled from one room to another; clothes were ironed for the day; and we all spent a little extra time getting ready (running blow dryers and curling irons, overloading the circuit). It was not just easy to be part of that tradition, but enjoyable–because we were sharing the same experience. But not so any longer. I’m on my own now. My roommate is a Christian but not a Seventh-day Adventist. Though she respects my practices, she doesn’t check my consistency. I have Adventist friends in the area, but it’s not as if we constantly remind one another of our commitment. Instead, we assume that each is on track. Perhaps that should change. In a place where the Seventh-day Adventist form of Christianity is outnumbered by so many others, it is easier, with every passing day, to excuse my behavior. But my primary concern is not that the grocery shopping and housecleaning are in progress as the sun goes down. For me, it’s the things that I am not used to ever doing that are now hard to categorize. I wouldn’t go to a lecture on Huckleberry Finn on Friday night but one on Christianity seems OK. If it were held in the amphitheater of Chan Shun Hall at Andrews, I’d go without a second thought. But the room at my public school is filled with non-Adventists, some of whom are atheists. What I’ll soon find out is that they haven’t come to discuss what we can do about the problem, but simply what the problem is. He Was Right, and I Was Guilty I sit there thinking, Yes, this is so true. We must never do this. It perpetuates a once-saved-always-saved mentality. The man is an atheist, and even he knows. Wow!
I’m forced to question the situation thoroughly. Would I have missed something had I not attended the lecture? Yes, I would have missed the opportunity to hear that particular scholar talk on that particular topic to that particular audience in one of the most fabulous displays of scholarly prowess I’ve ever encountered. But would missing all of that thwart my intellectual growth? Probably not. I may not have been writing this article, but in some other way God would have taught me the necessary lesson: when in doubt about what would please God and what would not (emergency circumstances aside), it’s better to tackle the deeper issue: commitment. If I am not committed to keeping the Sabbath, the lines of distinction become blurry as I go to the lecture on Christianity, an act that may not keep me out of heaven but certainly doesn’t bring me closer to God. And isn’t that what the Sabbath is for? Shouldn’t I participate in activities that I am certain will honor my Father in heaven and strengthen my relationship with Him? But I lack commitment to what I know to be true; any uncertainties serve to shake my foundation even more. In addition, if I submit completely to the will of God, I fear that I’ll have to give up so much–and in return for what? It’s the Gray Areas that Perplex Me
I like repeating Philippians 1:6: “He who has begun a good work in [me] will complete it” (NKJV),* but I often forget that the only way He can complete it is if I let Him. And letting Him means committing to what He wants. That requires putting me aside. Perhaps I should concentrate a bit more on this text: “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun” (Ps. 37:5, NIV). But even then, how do I commit to the Lord? When I think of the major commitments I’ve made in life, one thing unites them: I knew a lot about what I was committing to beforehand. I did my research. I asked myself again and again if the commitment would benefit both me and the person or entity I was committing to. To commit is to pledge to do. If I commit my way to the Lord, I pledge to do what He wants. But before I make my pledge, and even though I walk by faith, I need to do my research. What does it mean when I say that God is Lord of my life? And as Lord, what are His expectations for my daily existence? As I read the Bible and figure out that I’m committing to the Ruler of the universe and to the task of saving souls, things take a different turn. Gray areas dissipate. If I truly want this relationship, I’ll do all I can to make it work. I can’t blame grad school. I can’t blame my non-Seventh-day Adventist environment. That Friday evening lecture was some three years ago, and during all the time that’s passed since then, I’ve had many more opportunities to rationalize my behavior. At the core of my perversion of Christianity sits my selfishness, for which there is no neat and tidy solution. I may struggle with this for the rest of my life. But I find consolation in this: I am privileged to be able to ask God daily for guidance and strength as He completes the good work He’s started. _________________________ Taken from the Adventist Review online: http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=273 |
And yet, upon reflection, I see that I am a partaker in the perversion of Christianity because I am taking advantage of God’s grace, assuming that if indeed my decision to attend the lecture is wrong, I’d have time to ask for forgiveness.
MY PRIVATE QUARREL WITH GOD
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BY LYNDON MCDOWELL OR A LONG TIME I HAD A PRIVATE quarrel with God.
No, it wasn’t about His dealings with me. God has been more than patient with my faults and generous with His grace. I can say with David: “I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock” (Ps. 40:1, 2).* My quarrel with God, rather, was about someone else. It was about a woman whom I admire greatly. Her name is Abigail–one of my favorite Bible characters. Read her story in 1 Samuel 25. “She was an intelligent and beautiful woman,” is the testimony of Scripture. These are two important qualities for a queen. She was obviously a woman of courage. When Abigail was told by her servants that her husband, Nabal, had rejected David’s request for provisions and what the results would be, she boldly decided to go out and meet the angry outlaw herself. Abigail was politically astute. She knew that if David annihilated Nabal, it would unsettle many of the other ranchers in Judea–a politically damaging development. David needed the support of the influential people in the area for his claim to the throne (see 1 Sam. 30:26-30; 1 Sam. 25:4-8).
“David had just said, ‘It’s been useless–all my watching over this fellow’s property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing,’” when she came riding down the ravine. In anger he’d even invoked God’s name: “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to [Nabal]” (1 Sam. 25:21, 22). Like many of us, David’s humanity overwhelmed his spiritual calling, and he went off in no mood to parley with anyone. Abigail arrived just in the nick of time. Dismounting, this beautiful woman bowed before David, treating him as royalty. “Please let your servant speak to you,” she said, then quickly agreed with David’s assessment of Nabal: “He is just like his name–his name is Fool, and folly goes with him” (verses 24, 25). David would have been less than human if he did not appreciate her next statement. It expressed his ambitions perfectly. “The Lord will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my master, because he fights the Lord’s battles” (verse 28). David’s ruffled feelings were smoothed, and he paused to listen. Abigail was not only skillfully persuasive; she was also a good theologian, well grounded in her understanding of the character of God. Her well-chosen words were theologically profound and expressive in their imagery: “Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my master will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the Lord your God” (verses 28, 29). She may have been thinking of the dates and raisins pressed into the cakes she’d packed for David. The Lord is our salvation, and we are bound to Him by His everlasting love. This is what Abigail is implying. Then she vividly describes the other side of the equation: “The lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling” (verse 29). How descriptive and what assurance for us! Although the evil one pursues us, we are bound in a bundle with the Lord our God. One day we will see our enemy hurled away “into the Abyss, and locked and sealed” (Rev. 20:3). Don’t Have That on Your Conscience David got the message. He saw the folly of what he was about to do, and turned back. Abigail was also very loyal. After Nabal’s death she married David. From being the wife of a prosperous rancher, used to the luxury of five personal maids attending her, she became the camp wife of a roving enemy of the king, a refugee among the Philistines in the territory of Achish, king of Gath. With her charm, her wisdom, her spiritual insight, and her loyalty, what a great queen she would have made. Would the history of the kingdom not have been different if she had been queen? But it was not to be. In both Hebron and Jerusalem David made a number of marriage alliances, and Abigail became just another wife in the harem of a king, and she drops out of the story. Bathsheba now takes center stage. David had watched her bathing and had lost both his heart and his mind (see 2 Sam. 11).
Bathsheba was no Abigail. Where Abigail was loyal, Bathsheba was disloyal. We might say that she went willingly to David’s bed. She must have known that Uriah had been called to dine with the king, but she made no comment when her husband, refusing to go home, slept instead with the servants. She must have heard the palace rumors after Uriah was killed, but she made no protest. Bathsheba had none of Abigail’s political sagacity. Absalom’s sedition seems to have aroused no womanly instinct of its threat to Solomon’s claim to the throne. She had no inkling of Haggith’s perfidious ambitions for her spoiled son, Adonijah, to steal the throne. Nathan had to warn her. He even had to tell her what to say to David (see 1 Kings 1). Later, even when Solomon was crowned king, she credulously agreed to Adonijah’s request that she approach Solomon to ask permission for him to marry Abishag (1 Kings 2:13 ff.). “You might as well request the kingdom for him,” Solomon scolded (verse 22), and had Adonijah executed. That was Bathsheba! How could God allow such a woman to become queen! Surely Abigail would have been far more suited to that position. The question bothered me for a long time. I had a private quarrel with God about it. Then one day, rather suddenly, the answer came. Incredible Grace God had forgiven David. He also knew that David loved Bathsheha, and God was sympathetic. While God forgives, the natural consequences of our sin remain. For David, and indeed for all Israel, the consequences of his sin were unrelenting. Ahithophel, Bathsheba’s grandfather, “prompted by revenge for the family disgrace,” defected to Absalom (Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 735). As a result of his sin David lost four of his sons. He had on his conscience the staggering burden of sinful bloodshed that denied him his ambition to build the Temple. While the scars of sin are present, divine forgiveness has no boundaries. God forgave David. He held no grudges. David’s sin was blotted out, and God treated David as though he had never sinned. I still feel for Abigail. But I learned again that when God forgives, He forgives completely. He casts all our sins into the depths of the sea. As God’s children we are bound in a bundle with the Lord, pressed together with Him as figs are pressed into a cake, and He remembers our sin no more. This is the gospel message that the apostles proclaimed. “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you” (Acts 13:38). “In him we have . . . forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us” (Eph. 1:7). When we forgive we are inclined to remain resentful, but God does not. Unworthy as we are, God is willing to give us the desires of our heart. After all, God allowed David to keep Bathsheba, the woman he loved–and she became the progenitor of Jesus. _________________________ _________________________ |
Abigail was decisive in her actions. She understood the peril of David’s intentions and acted immediately. Scripture says she “lost no time” (1 Sam. 25:18), and put together a supply of food for David and his men to placate his anger. “Go ahead of me; I will follow you,” she told her servants (see verse 19). Apparently she also knew enough about men to be concerned about her appearance.
(Incidentally, there are many bathing Bathshebas around today. They are not seen on housetops, but they are just a click of the mouse away. They lurk in the hidden recesses of the computer, ready to titillate the senses, pillage the mind, and sink the soul in a swamp of lubricity. For those Davids who have ventured and been caught in the quicksands, the results have been frightful. The addiction that comes is an endogenous “drug” addiction almost impossible to break. There is forgiveness available, but shame and reproach will follow them to their graves. Virgil would say: Facilis descensus Averni–easy is the descent into hell.) Taken from the Adventist Review online: http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=71
FORGIVING THOSE WHO HURT US
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 T WAS A BEAUTIFUL evening. Mark Brewster, 20 years old, and Debbie Cuevas, 16, were sitting in Mark’s 78 Thunderbird just up from the river in Madisonville, Louisiana, enjoying their milk shakes. They’d been dating for eight months and were engaged in quiet conversation when two men approached their car and stuck guns to their heads. One of the men got in on Mark’s side behind the steering wheel and pushed Mark into the center spot on the front bench seat. The other man climbed in the backseat and put his arm around Debbie’s neck and nestled a sawed-off shotgun against her cheek.
The lead man, Robert Willie, said: “We’re escapees from Angola Prison [Louisiana]. We’ve killed before and we’ll kill again. Just do what we say, and everything will be all right.” After driving for a few miles they stuffed Mark in the trunk of the car, and then Robert Willie raped Debbie on the backseat. They drove to a deserted spot and took Mark out of the car. Debbie heard a gunshot, and they returned without him. They drove all of Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night to different states and back again. In the process Robert Willie raped Debbie again, and the other man, Joe Vaccaro, also raped her. The pair picked up another man, who finally convinced them to let Debbie go free. Robert and Joe were captured and sentenced–Joe to life imprisonment and Robert the death penalty. Debbie was called to testify at their various trials. The sentencing of the men brought a certain kind of closure to Debbie, but her biggest struggle was only just beginning. She began to have terrible nightmares and would often wake up screaming and in a cold sweat. She knew she should forgive Robert Willie, but how could she? He was totally unrepentant and had openly mocked her at his trial. When the prosecutors asked her to describe the rape scene in detail, Willie kept smacking his lips and grinning, until he made the judge so furious that he threatened to have his mouth taped shut if he did not shut up. How do you forgive someone like that? Struggle Over Forgiveness Is forgiveness always unconditional? Am I always supposed to forgive the other person? And what happens to my salvation if I want to forgive, but can’t? There are Bible texts that suggest that some types of forgiveness are conditional. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).* In the Lord’s Prayer we say to God: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12, KJV).
The next passage presents a different picture: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:13, 14). Notice that we are to forgive whatever grievances we might have against others. No limits are stated, no conditions given. We are to forgive in the same way that God forgives. If God only forgives when we confess, then we do not have to forgive unless the person who hurt us asks for forgiveness. Is this forgiving as Christ forgives? Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (tenth edition) defines forgiveness as “to cease to feel resentment against”; “to give up resentment of or claim to requital.” Does God hold resentment against us if we do not confess our sins? Does God have any bitterness toward us? No. This dilemma occurs because there are two parts to forgiveness. What we have are two moral imperatives that are in opposition to each other. On the one hand, we have the demands of responsibility, justice, and fairness. On the other hand, we have the demands of empathy, compassion, and mercy. We are afraid that if we extend mercy, it will seem that we condone what has happened. If we come down on the side of justice and fairness, it will seem that we are heartless, cold, and unfeeling. How Jesus Forgave Jesus shows us what it means to forgive relationally. He was unfairly arrested. He was condemned to death in an illegal trial. He was tortured by Roman soldiers under the command of Pilate. His closest friends deserted Him. He stood alone. Pilate condemned Him to one of the cruelest deaths ever devised by humans: slow suffocation by being nailed to a cross by His hands so that He could not breathe easily. We find Him, on a Friday afternoon, enduring this terrible agony. Around Him His own religious leaders are mocking Him, telling Him to prove that He is the Messiah by coming down from the cross. Would you want to forgive under those circumstances? Jesus utters these wonderful words: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Was Jesus asking God to spare these people punishment? Was He condoning their treatment of Him? Was He saying that they were innocent? No! Jesus was saying: “I hold no resentment against any of you for what you are doing to Me today. I am not bitter. I am not looking for revenge.” We could excuse Jesus if He felt angry and bitter. Anyone who suffers injustice should have feelings of outrage. But what do we do with those feelings? Do we let what the other person has done determine how we feel, what our emotions will be? Not one has ever been made happy by the emotions of resentment and bitterness. This is the message that Jesus is Legal Forgiveness God forgave us legally on the cross: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23, 24). The word “justified” is a legal word used in the law courts of the Roman Empire when a person was declared innocent. Jesus’ death became the substitute for the death we deserve. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14). Now what does this have to do with the Lord’s Prayer and confessing sins before God will forgive us? God forgave everyone at the cross. But we have to accept that forgiveness because God wants only people in His kingdom who are willing to forgive as He has forgiven. Forgiveness Is Costly
Forgiveness is extremely costly. It means acting toward the other person as if the problem had never existed in the first place. God’s forgiveness is offered to us so that no matter what our sin, we are always free to come again into the relationship with Him. But how can we be in this relationship with God if our hearts are filled with a desire for revenge upon those whom God has also forgiven? “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” Forgiveness is a divine act. How else can I let go of the hurt, anger, resentment, and pain that I have received? No payment can atone–how many mink coats must a husband bring his wife to show sorrow for his affair? There is no payment that can be attached to a relational debt. Giving Up Being a Victim But what happens if I want to forgive but can’t? Forgiveness is a process. It takes time. God does not judge us on how well we have forgiven, but whether we want to forgive. He takes the desire for the deed. Forgiveness frees us to become whole and healthy. Debbie Cuevas told her story about her experience with Robert Willie in a book called Forgiving the Dead Man Walking, in which she described her struggle with forgiveness. She discovered that much of her suppressed anger and resentment had been directed at God. Where was God when she was raped? Where was God when her boyfriend Mark was shot? Debbie began to go back to church. She opened her heart to the gospel of grace, to how God forgives us when we do not deserve it. She quotes from Lewis Smedes’ book Forgive and Forget: “If we say monsters are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have. Monsters who are too evil to be forgiven get a stranglehold on their victims; they can sentence their victims to a lifetime of unhealed pain. If they are unforgivable monsters, they are given power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most” (p. 248). Then Debbie writes: “I couldn’t begin to articulate it at the time, but I understood that truth even before Robert Willie was executed. I knew I had to forgive him–not for his sake, but for mine. Until I did, there was no escaping the hold his evil had on my life. . . . The refusal to forgive him always meant that I hold on to all my Robert Willie-related stuff–my pain, my shame, my self-pity. That’s what I gave up in forgiving him. And it wasn’t until I did that real healing could even begin. I was the one who gained.” With God’s help we can forgive and be healed of our emotional pain. _________________________ _________________________ |
It seems that God is saying that His forgiveness is conditional on us confessing our sins, and forgiving anyone who might have sinned against us. If this is the case, then I doubt anyone could be saved. How can an unconverted person have the strength to put aside all resentments and bitterness as a condition to salvation?
Remember that repentance is not a cause of God’s forgiveness. Jesus forgave the soldiers when they had not repented. He forgave them relationally, although legally they were not forgiven until they accepted what God had done for them on the cross.Story taken from the Adventist Review online: www.adventistreview.org
OH, TO BE SIX AGAIN
To Whom It May Concern:
I hereby officially tender my resignation as an adult.
I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of a 6 year old again.
I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four star restaurant.
I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks.
I want to think M&M’s are better than money, because you can eat them.
I want to play kickball during recess and paint with watercolors in art.
I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer day.
I want to return to a time when life was simple.
When all you knew were colors, addition tables, and simple nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care.
When all you knew was to be happy because you didn’t know all the things that should make you worried and upset.
I want to think that the world is fair.
That everyone in it is honest and good.
I want to believe that anything is possible.
Somewhere in my youth I matured and learned too much.
I learned of nuclear weapons, war, prejudice, starvation, and abused children.
I learned of lies, unhappy marriages, suffering, illness, pain and death.
I learned of a world where men left their families to go and fight for our country, and returned only to end up living on the streets, begging for their next meal.
I learned of a world where children knew how to kill….and did!!
What happened to the time when we thought that everyone would live forever, because we didn’t grasp the concept of death?
When we thought the worst thing in the world was if someone took the jump rope from you or picked you last for kickball?
I want to be oblivious to the complexity of life and be overly excited by little things once again.
I want to return to the days when reading was fun and music was clean.
When television was used to report the news or for family entertainment and not to promote sex, violence, and deceit.
I remember being naive and thinking that everyone was happy because I was.
I would walk on the beach and only think of the sand between my toes and prettiest seashell I could find.
I would spend my afternoons climbing trees and riding my bike.
I didn’t worry about time, bills, or where I was going to find money to fix my car.
I used to wonder what I was going to do or be when I grew up, not worry about what I’ll do if this doesn’t work out.
I want to live simple again.
I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days of the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.
I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.
I want to be six again.
– author unknown
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