Don't Wait!

When we put off forgiving others it is never a good thing. The regrets just mount up like piles of mud on our heart. A verse of Scripture crossed my path this morning and a wonderful little story to signify the purpose not to let your forgiveness be filed away for some other day.

Jesus reminded the people, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." -Mark 11:25 (TEV)

It was a cold winters evening when an older man in his seventies suffered a serious heart attack while shoveling snow from his sidewalk. He was immediately admitted to the local hospital. He was then treated at once in the emergency room to stabilize him and placed in the ICU room for observation.

Once the man gained his "where-abouts" he motioned for the nurse to come to his side. The nurse quietly asked, "Is there anything I can get for you?"

The man replied, "Can you call my daughter to simply let her know what has happened? She is the only family I have left in this world"

The nurse said she would and went to her desk to make the call.

As the nurse made the call the daughter answered the phone. Once hearing the news the daughter, Donna, became very upset at the news. The daughter nearly shouting into the phone while crying told the nurse, "You must not let him die. Dad and I had an argument over a year ago and I have not spoken to him since. My last words to him were "I hate you!" and I stormed out of his life. For nearly 15 months I have wanted to go back to him and beg his forgiveness, but just put it off. Please, don't let him die until I can get there to see him. I'll be there in about thirty minutes."

As the nurse hung up the phone and walked towards the patients room she notice the alarm going off in his room and staff from everywhere running into the man's room. He had gone into a full cardiac arrest. For nearly twenty minutes solid they tried everything from jump starting his heart to adrenaline in his veins, but nothing would revive him. The old man died just minutes before his daughter could arrive to see him.

As the nurse was cleaning up the area around the man's bed, she noticed the daughter outside talking to the doctor. She was visibly upset. The nurse went to speak with her to help console her. She could see the pain and anguish on the daughters face. A since of failure and hopelessness was welling up inside the daughter, Donna.

Donna began to explain how she never hated her daddy, but always wanted to be approved by him. She did not want to go another day without his forgiveness for their argument months before, but just never got around to going to see him. Now, it was too late. But she insisted on going in to him one last time.

The nurse thinking why put yourself through more anguish lead the daughter into the room. Donna walked on over to his side and buried her face into the sheets of the bed sobbing and crying loudly as she convulsed on the bedside.

The nurse trying not to watch this exhibition of anguish and sorrow noticed a piece of paper and pencil on the night table next to the bed. She made her way around to where it was and picked up the paper to read it. As she read it, tears began to roll down her own face and she handed it to the daughter to read. It was a quick and scribbled little note that read:

"My Dearest Donna, I do forgive you. I pray you will forgive me. I know that you love me. I love you too. -Daddy"

The story for these two ends here. The tragedy of guilt and shame of what could have been comes to mind here as we ponder the thought of forgiveness earlier in this father and daughter relationship. The simple answer to this story is "Don't wait!".

"Forgiveness is man's deepest need..." -Horace Bushnell

The ability to forgive is a gift from God and He intends we use our gifts everyday.

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Forgiven & Forgotten!

"What a tremendous gift from God it is when we are able to forgive and let go of others ills against us - forigve & forget! This is the way our Lord deals with us, when we genuinely ask for forgiveness in repentance, God forgives & it is as if we never committed the sin which made us an enemy to Him in the first place.

I read a story the other day about a young seminary professor who would always introduce his New Testament class with a story from his past.

He and his dad were close and one day he told his dad a lie which hurt his father deeply. For years this young man grew older, but let the lie go unresolved. Guilt built up inside him about the lie and eventually a sense of tremendous remorse began to knaw inside of him. So, finally he sat down and wrote his dad a letter.

In the letter, he reminded his dad of the incident which he lied to him in case he did not remember. He explained in genuine tone his remorse over the lie and asked forgiveness without any explanation or excuse for the lie. The man went about his days when fairly quickly a reply letter came from his dad. It simply read, "Sure I remember the incident and YES your are forgiven!".

To the son this was a tremendious weight lifted from his shoulders as he had carried the weight of the unresolved lie for years. The further payoff came many years later when his mother and father both were much older, became ill, and died within a few months of each other.

He was the oldest child, so it was he duty to go to the parents home and start the process of sifting through their belongings. He ventured into the attic and found an old trunk with many momentos they had kept throughout their life together. Everything that was really precious to them monitarily was in that trunk.

As he was wiping tears away at the memories his parents had kept from he and his siblings childhood years, he came across that letter he had sent to his dad asking his forgiveness. He wiped the tears back, opened up the letter to re-read what he had written. As he turned the letter over on the backside was written in his father's own handwriting a word "FORGIVEN!" and it was underlined. His father had forgiven him and when his dad was done with something and beyond he would write it down and underline it meaning "finished".

By the letter being in that old trunk of mementos, with the word FORGIVEN written on it was his dads way of saying I have no unfinished business in this trunk. This was a tremendous gift his dad had given to him not only at the time of the reply letter, but years later when he found the letter as a treasure and the word FORGIVEN written on it. His dad had relinquished all traces of the hurt, the resentment, and the bitterness over the years.

In the same way, our heavenly Father will forgive us when we are genuinely remorseful and repentent before Him. I understand from my own experience, we sometimes need to ask for forgiveness from someone, and at other times we need to simply forgive someone and let go of the hurt and pain they might have caused. Either way forgiveness whether given by us or received by us is a gift from God to be treasured. God is here to help us in either situation.

In Matthew 6:14-15 Jesus tells us, "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." This is speaking about an attitude of heart and action from that attitude.

Geroge Herbert once wrote - "He who cannot forgive others breaks the brdige over which he must pass himself."

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What holds the substance of your kids heart?

WisdomIn keeping with my series on Training up the Children or “Which way did they go?” it is imperative that we as parents know who has the heart of our child. This is an individual glimpse not corporate. Each child will give their heart to someone, something, or a multitude of someone’s and/or things whatever that is, their heart does not remain dormant once alive on this planet. Our job as caring parents is to know just who owns our child’s heart in order to help them grow into that fact or away from that fact. Parents must use the Scriptures such as this in order to deal with the deepest core of the child. Sinful prostitutes are positioning themselves to lure the heart of our children away. These prositutes are not limited to just female or male, but the television, movies, cars, trucks, money, houses, vacations, video games, sports, clothes, the “in” crowd, the latest fads, and so on….these can all be prositutes to the heart of our children.

Proverbs 23:26 “My son, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways.”

Wisdom is speaking in this instance. Wisdom is another name for God or the Lord Jesus who is the incarnate wisdom. Wisdom calls out, demands that we give Him our heart. To train our children to be wise is a very important lesson. As our kids get older all kinds of activities, events, people, and obsessions will make every attempt at luring them away from God.

Why does God call us out and demand our heart? As Spurgeon so eloquently put it “Only love will thus seek love.” He is not calling for our heart in order to spoil our lives. God knows that the heart of man is an evil destructive machine and without us giving Him our heart this destructive vessel will destroy not only our own lives, but the lives of others. Wisdom is greatly increased by one giving their heart to God in totality.

The saying goes “He who has the heart has the man.” Whatever object, person, or place that enjoys being the king or queen of our child’s heart will lead them down a destructive path. As parents we need to be sure that we are training our sons and daughters to refuse by the power of God to allow their hearts to be given away or even taken away by anything that would pull us from the feet of Christ.

They must see in us a heart that belongs to Christ. Our actions speak of what is in the heart…from our mouths gives a picture in words of the scene going on in our hearts. We must be careful to exhibit from our actions and our speech a reflection of God living vibrantly in our lives. Our children will know the owner of our hearts by who they hear and see us to be. A quick study was done recently about this very thing. The study was done on children to see if their parent’s actions spoke louder than their words or visa versa. The results are astounding. The test was done concerning charitable giving. The parents that would say to their kids, “Don’t give too much, keep your money” yet would always end up giving much more themselves resulted in children that would give very much of their time and money. However, the results from the parents who taught their children in word “Give much of your time and money to these great causes” yet they themselves never gave much money or time, those children became the worse givers of all.

As parents our actions really do speak loudly. If we are going to train our children it must be done from the position of action not just words. Whenever we mess up, a training opportunity was created and they can learn from our mistakes as well. We must let the kids know that our hearts belong to God and then be transparent on that. Make sure our actions even in a mistake prove to our children that we belong to God. God called David “A man after His own heart”. We all know that David was not perfect and sinned violently…yet, when confronted about his sin, immediate repentance and crying out before God. This is the transparency we want to pass to the kids. This is the training that will build wise respectable young adults someday.

Hugh Stowell said this:

“For two reasons we should give God our heart: 1) unless the heart be given, nothing is given. Read further in Hosea 7:14, Matthew 15:8-9 and 2) if the heart be given, all is given. Read further in 2 Chronicles 30:13-20

So, in the daily event called “life” we are training our children in a direction to go. An important part of this training is that they give their hearts over to God completely without holding back anything. Many o the greatest missionaries of the past 200 years would tell you that without the giving of themselves over to God 100% their mission work would have been in vain.

Spurgeon went even further to say “At once-give God your heart. Delay is wicked and injurious.”

God desires not half a heart or trust nor does He want a divided loyalty or trust. He commands total obedience which requires a complete heart. Great training is done when they understand they should give their heart or trust to God.

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