I Forgive You

Oftentimes, much of the healing we so desperately need is on the other side of pain. When our body suffers a wound, there is pain, and during the healing process we may continue to experience pain.

I have been suffering with plantar fasciitis for a few months now. As painful as it is, the therapy to work towards the haling process is even more painful. I really want to be better. I want to experience full healing in my foot, mainly because I am hindered from the daily routine of running that I had established before the injury.

My running routine was so good for my body and my mind and heart. The ironic thing is that because of the running routine and some bad pre-run, during run and post run habits - the plantar fasciitis emerged.

So I have a choice. Go through more pain, retrain my mind and body to run properly so I can get back to health, or I can just move on in life. Cope with the foot pain, and forget about the therapeutic benefits that running afforded me. Either way, there is pain involved.

I’m not writing about running. I’m writing about forgiveness. I’ll get to that eventually. Today like many days since I have been unable to run - I took a bike ride on a path that has been a new kind of therapy for me. It is a form of physical exercise, it gets me moving through nature in the outdoors and it provides the meditation time I need. The path crosses over streams and goes through wooded areas. It’s just me and the trail and my thoughts.

I’ve started to realize these trail rides that last about 45 min to an hour have themes. Emotional themes, thought pattern themes, inspirational themes, spiritual themes etc.

Today’s theme and it is a consistently recurring theme for me - was forgiveness. I, like you, have been deeply emotionally wounded many times throughout my life. And there are triggers that will refresh those wounds and bring the pain to the surface again. Our very personalty shape, the way we are naturally wired determines in what ways and in what situations we are most vulnerable to emotional wounding.

My emotional pain was making me sick. It was making me sick physically. It still tries to make me sick physically. It still tries to make me sick mentally. Mental illness isn’t for a handful of people who have been institutionalized - mental illness infects all of us. Just as very few people are in perfect physical condition, very few people are emotionally and mentally in perfect condition.

So my ride today was a mental health ride. It was a painful ride, a healing ride, a forgiveness ride. The therapy to keep me on a healing path involves locating those wounds that are making me sick, and doing the emotional exercises to move towards my healing.

O sure I could just say Jesus took my wounds so I can be healed and act like that’s the end of it. But there is a deeper truth that I would miss if I left it at that. I am to go to that cross with him, and to know Him truly in the fellowship of His suffering to know what it means to forgive freely, no strings attached, no recompense offered in return.

The forgiveness process takes the burden, feels the weight of it, takes it to the cross, gives it to Jesus and leaves it there. And while we are there, at the cross, we feel the guilt of our own sin and shortcomings as well at the tremendous freedom of being forgiven by Jesus as He looks into our eyes and says, “I forgive you, go and sin no more.”

If we are to stay healthy, to live in the most desired place of health in every way - we have to maintain proper diet and exercise in the forgiveness department. Pretending it didn’t happen to us, acting like we have forgotten those times of emotional wounding and abuse isn’t healthy. Stuffing it down in some dark hole like a monster we have locked in a prison with a key of self-denial is the ultimate lie. When we do that we are living in incongruence with our truest self and working against our emotionally healthy self.

Foot rolling on ice, stretches, foam rolling, toe stretching, these things really suck and are super painful. But they serve to break down the tissue that needs to grow back healthier. Those exercises serve to strengthen and train muscles the way they are supposed to function to support balance, health and bodily balance.

I have been exposed recently to behaviors in people around me that have caused a flare up in some old wounds. I started having stress dreams again, my psyche trying to solve issues that it can’t resolve. My emotional soul crying out, “why?” So it’s time for some soul rolling on ice, some painful foam rolling of the mind and emotions, some painful stretching that is needed to bring balance, and to bring perspective and health back.

A Letter of Forgiveness to those I have perceived to be responsible for the Wounds of My Soul

To my forgiven one,

If I shared with you the context, the time, and the perspective of my wounding you may be in the position of strong denial of any culpability in my wounding. And so I cannot burden you with further responsibility and accountability for my wounds. If I did I would be bringing harm to you, pronouncing a future judgement on you that is not mine to pronounce. Whatever weight you bear is for you alone to be aware of, to have an open ear to the Spirit and voice of the Lord offering you grace to make things right for your health and for the plan of God to be the richest and fullest version it could be in your life. My prayer is that in some way you may have been aware and have come to a repentance before the Lord, it is there where your true repentance belongs, not towards me.

Even though it would somewhere in the fantasy of my mind bring such long desired relief and emotional release that I have longed for. Because it hasn’t come I live in faith as though it has, so I can release you and receive what the Lord has for me.

For my part I must verbalize the extent of my experience, I must write this to release it once again for my heart to be healed and to move on with God’s plan and purpose for my life.

I forgive you for speaking words of good intention toward my well being that you were never able to fulfill. I thank you for at least having the desire to do so, even though the action and follow through never manifest. I don’t blame you for saying things you can’t follow through on, I suppose most of us do that in some way on a regular basis.

I forgive you for giving a listening ear to corrupt communication that did not fairly represent my integrity, my heart, nor my character. I forgive you for insulating yourself against honest and open communication that would have been healthy for our relationship and the health of so many in our circles of influence.

I forgive you for thinking because the uniqueness of my personality the issues between us were all mine. I forgive you for misusing and misapplying scripture to manipulate and control me emotionally and bully me into a pattern of behavior that suited you and your purposes.

I forgive you for being so caught up in a subculture of privilege and prominence you didn’t know how to boldly address it and bring some freedom to everyone in the organization.

I forgive you for withholding what was good towards me when it was in the power of your hand to do so.

I forgive you for making so many decisions on my behalf, assuming you knew how I felt, assuming what would be good for me without talking to me, for not being patient with my meditative, processing personality so we could move together stronger each uniquely thriving for a common purpose.

I forgive you for abandoning me physically and emotionally. For running, for presuming that you somehow know who I am, who I have become. I forgive you for never really coming clean nor taking responsibility, for never giving a sincere apology without the, “If I offended you,” clause of plausible deniability.

I forgive you for using humor as a screen to avoid the pain of sincere brokenness and humility to make amends to admit the wrong and make it right.

I forgive you for paying for my silence.

I forgive you for choosing criticism over affirmation, for stating facts instead of extending faith towards my unlimited potential.

I forgive you for seeing me through the eyes of your wounds, for the sin of projecting the sins of others onto me and holding me in bondage to them.

I forgive you for gas lighting me, and for using me to the furthering of your personal fulfillment.

I forgive you for expecting me to be something I am not.

I forgive you for humiliating me in a public meeting in a way that only you and I knew of the vengeance, anger and retribution you were exacting on me as a result of an unfair assessment of my perspective on a promise made and a present predicament.

And I forgive you for making it about an offense I brought, while never truly owning your part of it. I forgive you for not realizing that the bigger person and the role of leader and influencer was yours - which made it so much worse. It never really did feel like a Matthew 18 moment, it felt like an exacted revenge and a lesson to never cross you again. For that, I forgive you. You will never know how I felt, because I choose not to do what you did to me.

I forgive you for taking my candor as a character assassination and holding me in low esteem, believing the worst of intent from the best I had to bring in my content.

I forgive you for playing favorites and for taking more than your fair share.

I forgive you for every word of gossip and slander spoken in secret against me.

I forgive you for believing more in your past, then in God’s desire, promise and purpose for our combined future.

I forgive you for the passive aggressive communication to promote your agenda and expecting me to champion it.

I forgive you for pushing your agenda on me while out of insecurity blocking my vision and God’s call to ministry from entering the realm of your possibility.

I forgive you for using me as just another number, just another follower, just another stepping stone on the path of your success.

I forgive you. I am letting you go. Again. There is healing in my pain. There is growth from my humility and willingness to be overlooked, to be used.

I am willing to keep going to the cross, to ask for forgiveness, to offer forgiveness and to receive forgiveness.

Many will miss the beauty and the worship this kind of release brings. The private tears, the private pain. The hours in the embrace of the Lord if we will run to Him with our hurts, and not run away from Him and remain hurt.

If you read this, go write a letter of your own and let Jesus hear your heart ache. Let him see your forgiveness and bring healing to your mind to your soul and to your body.

By His stripes we are healed healed. He forgives me and heals me. I forgive you and in Jesus, I am healed.

For the Love of George Floyd

My Brother George Floyd was murdered. My sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters and my cousins and grandparents - all of them have been tormented, tortured, hated, slandered, ridiculed, discriminated against, not heard, not listened to, not allowed to flourish to the fullest capacity that God has created them to for far too long.

It's been happening since Cain killed Able and their blood cries out for justice. Their dignity is crying out for restoration and reconciliation. 

As long as another human being who holds the capacity to act without regard to their own preservation stands idle, unresponsive, there remains culpability and complicity in our inaction.

My brothers and sisters - Speaking for Christ followers like me - we all need to repent. I repent. Please forgive me. Please forgive us. 

We are created to know better and empowered to act, we are enlisted and commissioned by Almighty God to offer answers and solutions.

Wherever we may find ourselves identified within the human race by skin color, or nationality we must acknowledge the disproportionate allocation of privilege vs discrimination towards our brothers and sisters of darker skin color. Because of those identifications in the human race - because I am a white man - I'm hard pressed to empathize. I have never come close to experiencing the horror of discrimination. So with all the grace I can don - I commiserate and I sympathize with my brothers and sisters of African American heritage who are so heavily and mercilessly persecuted.  

So with what I have been given, never having been a victim of such injustice I can only speak up and share my perspective, from my conviction and my understanding of God's Word.

I can't remain silent. But my voice has a specific context that doesn't share the same weight as others. I have seen public derision against ministries and white people who have tried to speak up, to address the issue, to express heartbrokenness and stand in solidarity - they have been met with remarks of, "stay in your lane," "leave this one alone," "sit this one out." 

Others are pushing for public statements from everyone, "your silence is compliance," they cry.  Yet in the midst of it all - I encourage all of you out there, to speak up and speak out with grace and love, be brave and don't be intimidated out of expressing your heart and raising your voice against evil, against injustice, against racial prejudice, against hatred.  And don't be intimidated into saying something you aren't ready to say. God's timing is perfect. When it's His timing it's for His glory.

So I want to share a perspective worth contemplating. I feel it gets to the root of the problem and to the root of what seems like the lack of movement in a positive direction on this issue for so long.

To echo what a friend of mine said - it's not just a skin issue, but it's a sin issue that presents as a skin issue.

For us to get to the place of peace, for us to allow love to inhabit our humanity we have to clearly identify the truth that brings those realities into their proper context.

We have to divide truth from falsehood, light from dark, good from evil, humanity from divinity, the temporary from eternity.

We are divided on this issue but along the wrong kind of division. We need to find alignment on the same side - and for that a different kind of division is needed.

The Word of God divides. It establishes the place, the order, the context of everything in the spiritual universe and in the physical universe for that matter.

So too our words must divide. But we must rightly divide the Word of Truth. In other words we must speak rightly - at the right time  - the right things.

When we do that, there will be a polarization of perspectives. There is no avoiding it.

Jesus said He came not to bring peace but to bring division. It sounds like a paradox but the presence of the prince of Peace divides the kingdom of light and life from the kingdom of darkness. And the only way to the kingdom of light is through Jesus. There's no other way.  And that my friends is highly controversial. Highly divisive.

Jesus spoke division. He was a name caller. White washed sepulcher is name calling. When Jesus said that, He was highlighting hypocrisy. His words were inflammatory and highly insulting.

Yet these were words of love from the greatest lover of all time.

This wasn't hate speech it was love speech.

He was calling them out for where they where and calling them to come to where He was. To a higher revelation. He still does that today.

Jesus was the Living Word, the sharp sword dividing asunder soul and spirit joints and marrow.

Keep in mind Jesus was sinless. He never sinned.

But He got angry and He spoke angry words. 

As leaders our public words should always establish clear division. There isn't really middle ground, or a happy medium. And angry words aren’t necessarily wrong words. And divisive words aren’t necessarily wrong words.

It isn't wrong to be angry, it's just wrong to act out sinful ways as a result of anger. And there's room from some drastic behavior as a result of anger, and you can still be in avoidance of sin.

Look at Jesus’ temple tirade - still without sin. Because his acts of violence were against the desecration of what has been set apart as holy they were still sinless violent actions.  

They hit the mark of answering God’s call to call out right from wrong, light from dark. 

We should all be angry and outraged and we should shout loudly in every way possible that the sacredness of human life, the dignity of human life has not been prioritized and preserved above all else. 

And that the focus of our God given freedoms, the structuring of and enforcement of laws that protect and liberate our people are getting lost in the pursuit of greed and materialism, the excess of government bureaucracy and overreach as well as it's many hypocrisies. 

You have to understand that when there is no clear demarkation established from our words we should start to question - what are we saying? And should we be saying it?

So we are right to clearly identify where issues fall in terms of God's Word and in light of eternal truth. 

In those terms, God's Word doesn't unify, it divides, it rightly divides.

When a clear demarkation is made, it allows people to begin to grapple with the issue and it gives them a chance to see where eternal truth stands regarding the issue and where they stand regarding the issue.

Then there can come clear contexts to evaluate the events that have shaped our pasts, and the heart beliefs that define our perspectives.

Then there can be a clear measurement of rule and standard.

The call for repentance divides the repentant from the unrepentant. Repentance is a divisive call to action.

Before I go on further let me say, love is the line of demarkation. God is love and His Word is love and His command is to love.

No one gets murdered when love is the operating truth that brings a right division into perspective. 

But this is key before I go on. Loving our neighbor as ourself only comes through the love of the Lord God with heart, soul, mind and strength. 

Without out love of God first, there is no love of neighbor. Without the Lord, the King, and surrender to Him as such, there is no love to offer.

His kingdom of love has to come to earth through us, and assault the kingdom of darkness in this present reality.

We are to love as God loves us, with the power He gives us to love through us. Because we can't love like we are supposed to. 

I don't think we should be nervous about the volume or the variety of voices that begin to cry out over any given issue. 

People need to emotionally process, and get out of their mouths what their heart has truly been concerned with or centered around.

In fact when the multitudes cry out, heaven is listening and so should we be listening. It is part of the process of identifying where kingdoms are in conflict, and where prayer needs a shifted priority. 

When a race, or a nation cries out in agony and pain, the Lord hears the cry. He doesn't stop to argue the technicalities, He hates injustice. All injustice. Towards anyone.

We need to understand that after thousands of years of injustice from the heart of sinful man against one another, the earth is groaning under the agony of injustice. Not only that, the seeds of injustice that have been sown have left us with harvest fields full of crops heaping up judgment against the perpetrators. We are drowning in the judgment of God on the earth that can't be restrained. It can only be redeemed through the blood of Jesus. Still . . .

We can't be silent about that.  We can't not weep and pray over that. We are involved and we are guilty of letting it persist, instead of bringing redemptive purpose to the front lines to stand against it, instead of living and acting proactively to preempt it from happening in the first place. 

The fact that all this injustice is ongoing and there doesn't seem to be a global movement by the Body of Christ to keep it in the spotlight, to keep it from recurring, should weigh heavy on our hearts. 

The fact that these events of human depravity that get caught on film are the ones that insight uprisings and multiply the presence and outworking of the darkest part of human hearts only adds insult to injury.  And so we are just as guilty of the ripple effects as we are of the first cause. 

That there isn't a burning passion by God’s people to consistently infiltrate the darkness on a regular basis with light, hope and help in every area of society is more than frustrating.

We must do more than hold worship services. How can we worship a God of love who isn’t lived out on the streets? 

Who is in the homes? Who is in the precincts? Who is on the streets? Who are the ones closest to every lack of love at every level that have the words of life and counsel to bring? 

Who was helping the angry officer deal with his deepest pain in a way that doesn't get to the point where he is a chronic violent abuser. To prevent this repeated tragedy?

Who was in his life at the moment he needed love, encouragement? Who was there to be a different voice than the one that led him down the murderous path he ended up taking?

I know who wasn’t there. We weren’t. And so many other places we should have been. 

Public movements, the outcries, they cause a shift, they highlight the pain, they point to love and justice. We get a chance to grieve and get a chance to mourn the fallen. We get a renewed sense of conviction and perhaps a chance to grasp in a deeper way that racism is a problem in all of us and for all of us to deal with. But when the fires are done burning in Minneapolis and in our nation - when the heat of the story fades away from the top of the feed who is in it for the long haul?

You would be right to ask, “if God sees this injustice why doesn't He seem to move against it?”

People ask where God is. Why does He let it happen? The short answer and only a partial answer, is that He allows to happen - what we - His people - allow to happen.

And He isn’t silent. His answer is in us. He answers, He responds when we, His people behave and carry ourselves as representatives of His answer. And His answer is always love. Love at every level. 

Confrontational, unconditional, Long-suffering, compassionate, truth telling, Agape love is His answer to every outcry to every injustice, to every inequity. 

His answer as Jesus Christ the sacrificial Savior shines against the backdrop of evil and darkness only if we carry that light, only when we carry that torch. 

The darkness in human hearts has been addressed eternally. God doesn't need to answer that question again.

He didn't respond to original sin - He preempted it from being permanent - by coming in the form of man and paying the price for original sin for all eternity. That's how much He loves creation. That’s His answer, the perfect answer to the problem of sin. 

And his short stint as a man on earth gave us the roadmap on how to live, act, pray and minister as long as we have breath. 

I think it is unfair to act like because this issue is fresh and that it has once again boiled over -  that it's new.  It isn't new.  I think it's wrong to say these times are unprecedented - they absolutely are precedented. Hitler wasn’t a person - He is the ever present demonic spirit of human hierarchy and supremacy over our brothers and sisters. It’s a murdering evil heart that started with Cain and can be present in any of us at any time. 

And when we even in the slightest way in ignorance or with subtle intention behave in cooperation with that spirit we have committed murder in our hearts against our brothers and sisters. 

Yet if we only address this as a racism issue -

If we compartmentalize it we have not recognized the underlying problem. 

We can't say we are a healthy vibrant church that is relevant in the world, and be caught so flat footed by the repeated and recent highlighting of this long standing issue, the skin issue caused by the sin issue.

This tumultuous season I believe should stand as a call to repentance and a call to shift back to preaching and living on mission the heart of the gospel message to all of creation. 

That we would move with urgency and with strategic planning as a body of believers to penetrate all of society with an all out assault of love - Love of God and love of neighbor against the enemy's territory marked by hatred, discrimination and persecution.

Let's live the love of Jesus, pray in love and respond in love. Let's rightly divide light from dark, truth from falsehood.

It's time for the church to pivot from growth strategies to love strategies. From creating tribes and cultures to living “as one” transcendently as the family of God interconnecting every nation tribe and tongue.

This isn't a "their issue" or this isn't a "that" issue, this is "the" issue. 

If we haven't gotten this right we don't have anything else right. 

God forgive us for getting the main thing wrong. The sin thing wrong. The love thing wrong.

God help us make it right and to keep the main thing the main thing. 

Regardless of the cost. 

Lead us to the cross of Jesus. 

Keep us covered in His blood and united through His redeeming love until He returns ushering us into the ultimate restoration of all things. 

Amen.