Forgiveness

Today was the first full day of Faithwalkers 2008 and it was pretty wild. Honestly, my heart was a bit sluggish coming into it, but God gave it a bit of a tune up and its running quite a bit better.

There were a ton of awesome teachings, but the last one of the day had the biggest impact on me. Bill Young talked about forgiveness. He is probably the funniest pastor I have ever listened to, and I really appreciate that. It keeps me really engaged the whole time.

As with any good teaching, Bill shared a bunch of verses, but there were a couple that felt really super significant to me. One of the first verses was from 2 Peter 1. Basically from verses 5-8 it gives a list of qualities to increase in your faith (goodness, knowledge, self control...). Then verse 9 says that if you don't have those qualities listed you have forgotten about the forgiveness of God. This quickly pointed out to me the importance of understanding forgiveness in order to continue to grow spiritually, and Bill talked about this as well.

Colossians 3:13 says "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you". We've all heard that before, but when I was reminded how God has forgiven me, choosing to remember my sin no more, I knew that there some people that I needed to forgive. Forgiveness that I have been holding back for more than a year. I struggled with not feeling like I could, but Bill Young laid it out pretty plainly that it doesn't matter how you are 'feeling', you need to forgive anyways. So after a bit of struggling, I gave it up. Even though nobody was asking me for forgiveness, I thought about how many times God must forgive me even though I have not asked for forgiveness after each offense. I said out loud to God "I forgive" and powerful sense of freedom filled me. Almost like a load off of my back.

I really see how forgiveness can be a hinderance to spiritual growth. I am so thankful for what God taught me today and changed in my heart today. Definitely listen to that message if you have a chance to. Just google faithwalkers and go to the messages for faithwalkers west 2008.

Jeremiah 32

This morning I was reading Jeremiah 32. At first I was a little confused. Jeremiah had been prophesying all these huge things like God was going to destroy Jerusalem if people didn't repent of their sins. Then as the destruction that he prophesied before was happening and it looked like all of Jerusalem was going to be completely destroyed and ruined, God tells Jeremiah that his Uncle is going to come to him and try to sell his land to Jeremiah. It seemed way out of place since the whole city was under attack by a very powerful army and it was being destroyed as all this was happening. So Jeremiah buys land that is worthless and I had no clue why, until I read on.

In verse 27 God says "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?". Finally it all came together. God had promised that he would bring all his people back and rebuild the city after it was destroyed. I'm sure that at the time of its invasion, it looked hopeless. Everybody I'm sure wanted to salvage what they could and get out, never expecting to return. But Jeremiah trusted God (and I'm sure got a bargain on some sweet land). Jeremiah believed that God was powerful enough to do what He said he would do, even when it looks like He never will.

Spending time with my family has been somewhat difficult. It is hard trying to have any spiritual discussion with my family. At times it has felt completely hopeless that anybody in my family will ever get saved, but this reminded me to trust God. Nothing is too hard for Him, indeed, His hand is not too short to save. Please pray for my family, I dearly desire each person to be saved.

Jeremiah 20:9

If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name," there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. (ESV)

Christmas break is here, and there are parts of the break I am greatly looking forward to. I hope to be able to grow a lot spiritually during faitwalkers and push myself to physical limits during strong and wild. However, other parts of the break are staged to pose a fairly large spiritual threat. Whenever spending significant time with my family away from fellowship, I always experience sort of a set back in becoming more like Christ. Sin creeps into my life and I revert back to my old patterns. Instead of hungering for more time to spend in the word, it feels laborous to turn off the TV and computer and just have even a short quiet time (even though almost always when I do take the time I realize how much I love spending time at the feet of my savior).

My prayer is that this would not be the case for any of us. I am praying that just like Jeremiah, you and I would have a fire burning in us that we cannot hold in. This is the reason for the name of 'Uncontainable Fire' for this blog. I think we can use this blog as a team as sort of a tool to encourage each other with the word. Feel free to post quiet time thoughts, prayer requests, awesome God stories, etc. In fact, I ask that as you check your e-mail, also check this blog and add to it. I deeply desire to stay close to all of you over the break and I am glad that we have this tool to help us to do this over the break.

Praise God! His faithful love endures forever!