Forgiveness

Proverbs 30:12 [ESV] – There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.
There was a young woman in our ministry many years ago who. Growing up, she was abused and, as a teenager, acted out living a self-destructive lifestyle. But, in college she met Jesus and became a godly young woman making good life choices, with one exception. She kept picking bad guys as boyfriends. These relationships were short lived as each guy was selfish, foolish, and godless.
When we sat down to talk, I asked her how she interpreted what was happening and how she should respond. She said that she did not feel she deserved a godly man in her life as she was “damaged goods”. She went on to explain that things done to her and by her, starting at a young age, had made her dirty, guilty, and undeserving. She actually thought that, by bringing pain into her life, she was showing God how sorry she was in hopes that He would forgive her.
How about you? Is there any area of your life where you feel guilty, dirty, or undeserving? Be honest with God and yourself. At some points along life’s path, every self-aware person with a functioning conscience feels this way and responds in one of two ways:
1. We deny that they are dirty or assert that they were dirty but cleaned up the mess of their life.
2. We rightly accept that we are dirty, and wrongly assume that this state is unchangeable, fixed, and our identity.
In the Bible, there are around a dozen different words used to speak of this experience, such as defilement, uncleanness, and filth. Emotionally, this causes shame, and an effort to cover up what has happened and who we truly are. The connection between sin (that we have committed, and that others have committed against us) is an old one. Before sin, our first parents Adam and Eve “felt no shame”. Once they sinned, shame caused them to hide from God and one another, and cover their shame with fig leaves. This remains a family trait for all humanity.
The good news is that, on the cross, Jesus took care of both your sin problem and your shame problem. Hebrews 12:2 [ESV] welcomes you to continually be, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
You probably knew that Jesus died for your sin. Did you also know that He died for your shame, and that today He is not ashamed of you, but is there to help you? Throughout the Bible, this explains why God’s people often wear white to worship. We all need to be reminded that we are not defined by what is done to us or by us, but only what Jesus has done for us.
Do you truly believe that because of Jesus, you are both forgiven and made clean?

At some point, everything in your life from your dishwasher to your phone breaks. This includes your heart, which can also be broken.
Who or what has broken your heart?
The face of a person, especially the eyes, are like a window into their heart. Proverbs 15:13 [ESV] says, “A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.” We all know the difference between the appearances of these two hearts. A cheerful heart and a crushed heart are revealed in differing faces.
How’s your heart today? Cheerful? Crushed? Something else.
Importantly, when something is going wrong in your life and breaks your heart, your energy is depleted leaving you as a shell of yourself. Proverbs 17:22 [NLT] says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.”
There’s a difference between a bad person and a broken person. Sometimes, they both do things that are basically the same, but for different reasons. The person who is bad needs to literally break their hard heart by giving it to God. The person who is broken has seen life break their heart and they need to bring it to God for healing. If we don’t understand this difference, we can bless a bad person, and burden a broken person.
At various points along the journey, life will break your heart, and the heart of a person you are walking the path with. When this happens, the likelihood of bad decisions increases. When this happens, it’s good to think about your heart like you do your body. If your body suffers trauma that injures it, your body is then reset and sent through a rehabilitation process. If your heart suffers trauma that injures it, your heart also needs to be set by God with the help of wise counsel and given a rehabilitation process to heal up. If you do not do this when pain comes but just keep pushing forward, at some point you will break yourself badly. This means saying no to some things for a while so you can say yes to healing.
What is broken in your life and has broken your heart? How have you responded, and what changes might need to be made?

The poor guy was overwhelmed. In what felt to him like an avalanche, in just a short few months, he was diagnosed with a major health problem, lost his job, watched his car catch on fire, and saw his girlfriend dump him for another guy.
As we sat down, he seemed a bit in shock and was having trouble processing all that was happening. When asked why these things were happening and how he would respond, he would simply say, “I don’t know why this happened or what to do”.
Have you ever been there? Are you there now?
Trying to be delicate to build the guy up instead of beating the guy up, I asked him if the pain he was feeling were things that had been a long time coming. He struggled to see his life truthfully according to reality and respond wisely.
If honest, we’ve all been this guy and love someone who is this guy. He talked a lot about his pain, and a lot about other people and how they had either brought the pain or not helped him through his pain. But he was also a backslider. He had stopped walking with God, stopped taking advice from wise people in his life, slid back into bad old habits, and still expected his life to go well. Proverbs 14:14 [ESV] says, “The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways.” Everything in his life was harder and nothing was better because he had been in a long season of backsliding.
The difference between wise people and other people is not that they fail, but rather wise people learn from their failure and make life changes to avoid the same failure in the future. Proverbs 23:23 [NLT] says, “Get the truth and never sell it; also get wisdom, discipline, and good judgment.” Truth is how we find reality, wisdom is how we should respond to reality, discipline is the habitual making of wise choices, and all of this is leads to good judgment.
This man, and all of us to varying degrees at varying times, overlooked two basic truths.
1. He neglected the principle of sowing and reaping that the Bible mentions often. If we do not sow today, we won’t have anything to reap in the future. A farmer can eat well every year, then take a year off and starve to death. He had stopped exercising and eating well, stopped showing up to work on time and prepared, did not do the routine maintenance on his car, and stopped putting forth real effort to invest in his romantic relationship. His entire life was one of deferred maintenance.
2. He neglected the principle of delayed gratification. When he wanted something, he simply treated himself to it, whether or not it was wise. So, he made impulsive purchases on his credit card, which stacked up until he could not afford to maintain his car. Whenever he wanted to reward himself, he sat down with ice cream and a spoon to dig until he hit the bottom of the container.
These two principles work together. If we neglect what we should do today, and do not wait for the future, we bankrupt entire parts of our life (e.g. relationships, health, finances). As we feel the pain, it is helpful to ask, “what foolish choices have I made that have made my life harder?” Although this question can be painful, if heeded, it could stop the current pain and prevent further pain in the future.
What foolish choices have made your life harder? What exactly do you need to do to make a change?

The poor woman had been in a loveless and lifeless marriage for many years. She came to church, her husband did not. She loved the Lord, her husband did not. She wanted children, her husband did not. And, she remained faithful and her husband did not.
Knowing that her husband also had a few girlfriends he was also intimate with, this woman came in to the church office seeking some sort of advice on what to do. When talking about why it was happening and what she was going to do in response, she said, “I should have never married a non-Christian and so I need to stay with him because it’s God’s way of punishing me for marrying him.”
My heart sank. This poor woman had believed powerful lies about God and herself. Jesus spoke about the freeing power of the truth, and she needed this desperately. Proverbs 14:25 [ESV] says, “A truthful witness saves lives, but one who breathes out lies is deceitful.”
Every life, including yours, is filled with our interpretation of what is happening, and decision making regarding our response. Wisdom brings us to the truth which is reality. Folly and evil bring us to lies, which deceive us.
When we are hurting, two things can happen. One, we are more likely to get any advice we can. Two, lots of people give us their advice. This is often a bad thing. Why? Because we do not need a lot of counsel, but instead wise counsel. A family member, friend, or coworker whose life is a mess (even if well-intended) is as helpful as a winter coat during the Arizona summer where I live.
When hurt, Satan sends evil spirits and human beings to lie to you. Also, foolish people wander in to spout their opinion, which is unhelpful. These are forms of false witness because they are not testifying to the truth of reality as Proverbs 12:17 [ESV] says, “Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit.” Importantly, this includes you. The loudest voice in your life might be your own so watch what you tell yourself.
Who are the loudest voices in your life currently? Are they helping you find reality and respond wisely?

Most Bible teaching focuses on what you have done wrong and what Jesus did to help you have a new beginning and make it right. But, what do you do when you are not the one who has sinned, but are the one who has been sinned against?
For starters, we need to deal with reality and accept when we are feeling defeated and down. Proverbs 14:10 [ESV] says, “The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.” When we are sinned against and hurt, the response of our sinful flesh is to choose bitterness. Bitterness will overtake your entire life, continually pushing out your joy and the ability of others to enjoy life with you. How do you know you are bitter? Signs like reliving and retelling your suffering story is a clue.
One strong temptation when we have been sinned against is to return evil for evil, seeking vengeance rather than trusting the Lord to avenge. Proverbs 23:17 [ESV] warns, “Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day.” When someone sins against you, the key it to respond to God and not to them.
How do you know that you have worked through a forgiveness process? Jesus taught us to not only forgive others, but also bless even enemies. Proverbs 24:17 [ESV] says, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles…” You have sinned and God has sought good for you, and when you seek good for someone who has sinned against you, you are acting godly.
What forgiveness is not:
1. Forgiveness is often a private matter between only you and God that does not involve the other person.
2. Forgiveness is both a one-time event and an ongoing process. Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:21-22)
3. Forgiveness is not enabling crime, foolishness, irresponsibility, or sin. You can call the cops, not feel bad for refusing to fund their folly or take on their responsibilities, thereby enabling them to be irresponsible.
4. Forgiveness is not trust or reconciliation. Forgiveness is free in an instant. Trust is earned, and reconciliation is trust earned over time.
5. Your forgiveness is not God’s forgiveness. If the person does not turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ, their eternity will be one of unforgiveness.
Forgiveness is:
1. Responding to Jesus instead of the hurt. Forgiven people should forgive people.
2. Transferring the burden to God so you don’t keep carrying it.
3. Stopping trying to control people and outcomes and let things unfold according to God’s plan.
4. Letting go of both the sin and the stress so that you can heal spiritually, emotionally, and physically and start to heal from the hurt.
Who has sinned against you? How are you responding?

You have a pain threshold. There is a limit to the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional duress you can endure and remain healthy. You can feel when you have hit your limit. When this happens, it is wise to start by asking if the hurt is in any way, or to any degree, caused by your sin.
No one is perfect. We all have faults flaws and failures. Proverbs 20:9 [NIV] says it perfectly, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin’?” The answer to that question is obviously only Jesus Christ, and the rest of us need to examine our life to see if there is any wrong pattern of thinking and acting.
Sometimes we were foolish and just messed up. Other times, we are evil and chose rebellion to spite God. Proverbs 19:3 [ESV] says, “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.” Did you catch this fact? A hurting man blames God rather than owning sin.
If we are honest, we all wind up walking or running down the wrong path. When this happens, God provides this gracious opportunity according to Proverbs 14:16 [ESV], “One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.”
Turning away from evil and toward the Lord’s wisdom is repentance. Repentance includes the thoughts in your heart, feelings in your heart, and decisions of your hands.
Is there any sin in your life that is contributing to your hurting? What exactly do you need to do to turn away from evil?

Proverbs 27:9 [NLT] – The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.
Life hurts. Financially, emotionally spiritually, and physically, life finds a way of shooting torpedoes into the hull of your life.
Our family had such a season some years ago. Thankfully, some godly older wise counsel helped us walk through a healing process. Each had a unique insight and way of being a burden lifter.
Through it all, we discovered something I call the “hurt cycle”. Here’s how it works. One, we experience some form of hurt. Two, we then interpret why it happened. Three, we then determine our response. Two people can undergo the same hurt but respond very differently and plot a very different future depending upon how they interpret what happened and decide what to do.
Evil people use their hurt as an excuse to justify hurting others so that hurt is multiplied. Foolish people ignore their hurt, shift any blame they bear to others, make excuses, and live a life of deferred maintenance, neglecting the upkeep of their soul, spelling doom for the future. Wise people seek God and godly wise counsel.
If you are seeking wise counsel or serving as wise counsel for someone who is hurting, here are some things that will be healing, helpful, and hopeful.
1. Rather than doing all the talking, wise counsel listens to a hurt person to uncover what happened, why, and how they are responding.
2. You know you’ve hit a hurt when someone overreacts to an immediate situation which has multiplied the pain of a past hurt.
3. Wise counsel is knowing which truth applies to each person and their situation without using the same solution for every problem.
Just like a doctor can do great harm to the body by prescribing the wrong medication, so too we can add to someone’s hurt and harm their soul if we are not careful. One example is the story of a man named Job. He was a godly man whose life quickly cratered into a pit of death, pain, and poverty. Job had some friends who were anything other than wise counsel. They wrongly decided that God was punishing Job for his sin, and that he needed to repent of secret sin in his life. But the truth was that Job was under severe demonic attack. In the next series of daily devotions, we will examine in detail how to heal from a hurt and help others do the same.
Who is wise counsel in your life?