Archive for Forgiveness
Anointing with the Oil of Joy
Posted by: | CommentsMy last blog was about my son Jon’s near death experience with heroin and other drugs. I’d been studying rejoicing, one of the fruits of the Spirit. Rejoice in all things, Paul said. Now that “all things” weren’t so hot, I challenged myself.
The first reason to rejoice: my son lived. He awoke at the hospital and was able to talk to us. Later, while he slept, I watched his breathing the way parents watch a newborn’s little breaths while he sleeps. It seemed no less a miracle to me now as it had then. Looking into his groggy blue eyes, I was so thankful I was even seeing them again.
I rejoiced in what Jon had to say when he awoke. I’m really sorry, he said. I know I need help. I want to get clean. I want to go to rehab. Of course his bravado returned in a couple of days, but in all these years of drug use he had never, ever acknowledged that he was at rock bottom and needed help. Unmasked in the seriousness of the situation, he admitted that he’d lost control of his drug use.
Another blessing in disguise: Jon had pneumonia and had to stay in the hospital for a few days. There he was able to see how many people cared about him as friends visited. He was not so alone in the world as he had imagined.
Something unusual happened when we found Jon in his bedroom at home. He had been saving a two-liter soda bottle filled with water. His friend, Jesse, had brought it over the last time he visited us and had forgotten it there. After Jesse died Jon kept the water bottle on the floor like a relic, and it was by his feet when we found him unconscious. I knew that was “holy water” as far as Jon was concerned, but one of his friends grabbed the bottle and threw the water on his face to try and revive him. When I told Jon what happened to the water, he said, “So he saved me. Jesse saved me.”
At the most I would entertain the idea that the hand of Jesus was guiding Jesse’s when he left that bottle there almost two years ago. But after that Jon didn’t ridicule God again. If I mentioned God, he never again told me that there was no God and my beliefs were on par with the Tooth Fairy. He saw in that forgotten water bottle a spiritual intervention to save his life, and he gave up his insistence that the world consisted only of what we can touch and see. It’s a start. I rejoice.
I wasn’t prepared to be tested and tempted to display my worst attitudes.
After nine hours of standing watch over my son, I left the hospital. Getting away will be a relief from the tension, right? Oh, no. The assault came immediately.
I sat down to eat at a restaurant with family members. All I wanted was a respite and a bowl of soup. They had an agenda. (Do not eat with people with agendas. It spoils the digestion.)
I tried three times to change the subject, but one family member was completely undeterred. She was going to ask every question about Jon’s situation then and there. She caught me when I was tired, scared, and hungry. It was not a good conversation.
As we left the restaurant, she berated me for not “making connections” and not “giving trust”. She said that as I’d called her early in the morning about Jon’s condition, she was entitled to details. I said nothing, but I left the parking lot furious. Couldn’t she see I’d had enough? Why didn’t she care about the condition I was in? What made her think I owed her anything? Couldn’t she let me eat in peace?
I knew I needed to forgive them, but the restless waves that often form our family relationships rose to a tsunami. This has really crossed the line, I fumed. There was no consideration for me. She didn’t want to know about Jon, she wanted information for her own gratification. They think if they’d been Jon’s mother they’d be doing a better job. They’d know the answers. They’d get him in rehab. They think I failed.
I was upset, too, that anger and unforgiveness were getting the better of me. I kept thinking of the lines of an old gospel song: “Joy, joy, joy/ Joy in the Holy Ghost/ Don’t let anybody rob your joy/ there’s joy in the Holy Ghost”. In the hospital I had tried so hard to rejoice in this disaster. Now this situation had robbed my precious joy and replaced it with a rock-hard heart, and I hadn’t stopped it. I’d even reveled in it. Weren’t their bad behaviors rooted in attitudes I had suspected all along? Didn’t they deserve my contempt?
My mind came back to Philippians 2:5 – 7:
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
Did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
But made Himself nothing……
Equality with God is a big deal for Jesus to let slip from His grasp. It’s one of the many humbling things He did for us. I have what I think of as my own big deals. I mean, they’re big deals to me, but God’s not so impressed. What if that passage said:
Anne should not consider being respected as something to be grasped; or
Anne should not consider always being right as something to be grasped; or
Anne should not consider always having her way as something to be grasped.
I have a feeling there could be a hundred more of those uncomfortable little phrases informing me I have to let my grasp go.
In Psalm 45, the bridegroom is praised in this way:
You love righteousness and hate wickedness;
Therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
By anointing you with the oil of joy.
Psalm 45:7
I pray that I would hate the wickedness that would have my heart,
And I would lift my hands to praise God,
And He would anoint them with the oil of joy
So my grasp would slip from the things that would rob me.
Looking for the Open Window
Posted by: | CommentsRecently a greeting card had me laughing in the middle of Wal-Mart. A man and his wife were in bed for the night when a bald old man with a long white beard and moustache came up to their bedroom window, smiling. The woman was shrieking in horror at the sight of the stalker? intruder? murderer?
The inside of the card declared, “When God closes a door, sometimes He opens a window.”
It's often said that when God closes a door, He opens a window.
For quite some time I’ve needed employment that would bring in the kind of income that would pay for my home and household expenses. I have a degree in music performance that was not going to help me now. In the business world of the 21st century, my skills as an office worker in the 1980’s were laughable. The jobs on line were all looking for my resume. What resume was that? I didn’t really have one. And I loathed and dreaded the prospect of returning to school. One run through the gauntlet of academia was enough, and then some, as far as I was concerned. So when I prayed, “Lord, you know I need a job,” it was not the same as when I was in my early twenties and needed work. I was praying for some specific conditions that would meet the needs and abilities I had now, which were very different.
This year I became distracted from my financial needs. My son has had a very difficult year so far and that took up my energy. When there was flooding in the spring, I was one of those with a lake in my basement, and many hours were devoted to repair before we could return home, and more repair afterwards. When there was finally a break in the action, I looked at my finances and realized the situation had become dire while my attention had been diverted. Now the prayers became really urgent and heartfelt. Something had to open up – now.
I want to tell you what happened before and after that prayer. God prepared me for that moment of prayer, and as I said above, it looks like the window is opening for me at last.
BEFORE:
Just a couple of weeks before the financial crisis, God brought me to a place where I could heal from the guilt of my divorce. I’ve written some things before about this wonderful moment when I finally realized that God was not punishing me. It came to a head because guilt was stopping me from believing God could have an answer for me, or blessings for me. Guilt gnawed at me when I knew that all I could do was go forward from here. Guilt even gnawed at me although I knew in Christ I was forgiven. Counselors would write evaluations of my son and mention that his troubles began when our marriage became difficult, and my heart would sink. Some circumstance would go wrong and I would think, maybe my plans fall through because of the divorce. The idea of a curse became a superstition with me.
God sent me back to the Bible to see that there was no verse that said for some sins God punishes continually even if I repent. Then I found a humorous coupon that author Steve Brown has on his website: A certificate entitling the bearer to three free sins. Laughing, I immediately knew what I wanted my first free sin to be. Then I began to see his point: because of the blood of Jesus, I don’t need a coupon to be free from the consequences of three sins. I have been freed from the consequences of all the sins I have been mourning.
“Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’ – and You forgave the guilt of my sin.” – Psalm 32:5
Moreover, I am not cursed, but blessed:
“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.” – Psalm 32: 1 & 2
PRAYER:
When I prayed for the financial help I desperately needed, I called on God in the brokenness of my situation, not awash with the guilt of my past. I could not fix it. Only He could.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” – Psalm 51:17
This was a huge difference in my attitude in prayer. Because of what had been lifted from me in “BEFORE”, now I believed God had forgiven me and He would be willing to bless me again. Sometimes I got anxious, sometimes I cried, but I kept turning to the hope that God would bring the answer.
“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him.” – Psalm 62:5, KJV
AFTER:
My great friend Michelle called me seven days later. She had heard from an old friend she hadn’t seen in years. The woman wanted to know if she knew people who needed a job, who were worried that they would lose their home. She wanted to hire some people and give them professional training in her trade.
This certainly seemed to fit a lot of my prayer requests. I was someone who needed a job and whose house was on the line. The offer came through a friend rather than the route of a want ad or resume, where I couldn’t compete. The education was going to be one on one, where skills can be “caught” rather than taught. This was the way I learned music and is my favorite method of learning. I could work hours that accommodated my daughter’s transportation needs for school. As I became skilled, I could earn a substantial portion of my budget this way.
You might be expecting me to say that I then wrestled to determine the Lord’s will. And you might be surprised to learn that I can’t say I did. I have done that in years past. Instead, this is the attitude I took: I prayed, something that held answers to my particular requests appeared, I will thank God for it, and I am going through the open door to see what God does here.
Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” – Isaiah 30:21
Either 1) This is the way God has for me to ease the financial burden; or 2) I will see God teaching me something here, but in time leading me to something else.
Am I cut out for this new endeavor? We will have to wait and see!
