The single most important element in any human relationship is honesty – with oneself, with God, and with others.
The Risen Christ proclaimed not that we ‘have to forgive,’ but rather, that at last we CAN forgive–and thereby free ourselves from consuming bitterness and the offender from our binding condemnation. This process requires genuine human anger and grief, plus–and here is the awful cost of such freedom–a humble willingness to see the offender as God sees that person, in all his or her terrible brokenness and need for God’s saving power. I would never tell another, ‘You have to forgive.’ But my uncomfortable duty as a Christian is to confess the truth, so lethal to our self centred human nature: ‘Jesus, who suffered your sin unto his own death, calls you likewise to forgive, so that God’s purposes may be accomplished in both you and your offender.
We are all hiding from each other with big fig leaves, but God says, “You could stop because I am a way better covering. I have an actual payment for all the sin you are hiding. But it will take coming out from behind your leaves. It will take humility to see that you need Me”
Outwardly the course of my life is set, but inwardly I am profoundly restless and I feel far from You. There’s no risk left, and I’m scared of settling for this. Trouble is, everything’s going great, it’d be easy to miss my life a day at a time. It’s all become too easy, too predictable, too safe, too sensible I feel like I’m just dying spiritually… So I’ve got nowhere left to go, but to get down on my knees and wait for You to speak. The one thing I do know is that if I don’t learn to truly hear Your voice for myself, and follow it diligently – regardless of what others say – I could feel like a fraud for the rest of my life.
If writers don’t show me their struggles. I can’t trust their advice. I don’t want theories that smell like a library. I want advice to smell like it has some real life in it. I want to know that what they are writing about has worked on their own issues. So I can believe it might work on mine. Take away the struggle, and you take away my trust.
We all have longings. Crying out to God to fulfill them or change them or give us the strength to endure them strengthens our faith. Denying our longings under the guise of contentment may keep us from pain, may look more spiritual, and may make us less emotional, but it can lead to spiritual deadness.
Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.