Now, forgive them. John 20:19-20
Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.This begins with a simply complex statement: I believe in God.
I can't tell you when I first said it. And I don't know why I started believing to begin with. I have asked him why and … you know … he told me what I often tell my kids … just because.
But why Dad, they ask. Because I said so.
I interpret those conversations now as I know I don't need to know. God gave me the power to believe in omni-almighty, or something like that. So I believe in God.
See, I am not sure if I can do it ... that is, talk about God. I have never been introduced to him, so I only trust that I will recognize him when I see him. I can't tell you if I have really heard his voice in all the conversations we've had. I can't tell you where he is or might be. I can't tell you anything more about God than what he has told me and what he has done for me. But I think I am supposed to tell you "I Am has sent me."
I wonder if that part … "I think I'm supposed to tell you" … isn't how Moses wanted to say it after coming down from the spot where he saw the Lord in the burning bush. In asking the Lord for advice Moses said, Lord. I believe in you. You are the almighty. Your face glows too brightly for me to see. You are who you are. Now, you've told me that when they don't believe me, I am supposed to say "I am has sent me to you." So … what if they don't believe then?
My name is Jerry Smith, one of the most despicable sinners God - the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, has ever known. And as I said, what I am about to tell you is simply complex. "We Are the Church - a Forgiven People."
Truth is told … until a couple years ago I had never gone to church every Sunday for more than a few months. I have never given my 10 percent. I have never read the Bible from in the beginning to amen. I am really shy in a crowd … so being involved in church is difficult for me.
But I did read this: And Moses said, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you.'"
For about five minutes, I thought Exodus 4:1 was the first use of the word "believe" in the Bible. I found it in the concordance. "What if they do not believe" came shortly after God instructed Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. What if they do not believe God sent me?
This just goes to show how much I know about God.
Genesis 15:6 "Abraham believed the Lord, and was credited with righteousness."
I believe in God because I believe in Love. Love is God. Love is forgiveness. Love can not hurt. Love forgives those who do.
Love. ... It's the perfect word to describe God. It's a noun and a verb and a modifier. It's beautiful. It's warm and fuzzy. It purrs as you say it.
Love. ... A sound that flutters your heart, much like a cat does as it rests on your chest.
Love. ... The Lord.
Now say hate.
I made a list and checked it twice to see if I have been naughty or nice.
Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. … Well, God is the first and only God I have believed in. You don't actually expect me to believe in a blue deity, do you?
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God in vain. Isn't his name Jehovah or Yahweh?
Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy … The Sabbath Day is Saturday, I am supposed to go to church Sunday; it's always been a great holy day.
Honor thy Father and Mother … Well, Mom and Dad say they are proud of me.
Don't kill ... don't cheat on yourself or your wife … don't steal … don't lie … don't covet property or people. … My crimes are enormous. I think I have to be at least 10-for-10 times 10 in my failures. I can't help it. That's the way human nature is. You know, the penalty for breaking any of these laws is … death … that is removal from God, the Father of Love, the warmth of love, the spirit of love. In that death, there is no Love, no warmth, no commitment. You will feel cold. You will burn up. You will die. Man, I am in BIG trouble.
We have a gillion different laws with a gillion different punishments. But God has only one punishment … death for sinners, death for lies, death for abuse, death for hate, adultery, murder, desire … death for all things that are against love, death for turning your back.
Tell me … which of these 10 is the worst sin? They all end in death. I am ashamed of myself, or who I was, or who I could be, or who was me.
So … all I have to do is believe?
Believe in Love? Believe in I Am?
John 11:25 "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
Yes, I can't help it. I see God everywhere, in everything. I know now He has called me, by grace, to pray, to study the ways of love, to never say no, to use the seven times 70 rule daily, to play guitar and sing out of key, to be a good father and husband. When life gets hard to deal with I know I can count on him because ... anyone who can create all of this …
What a rush, what a joy life becomes when you pray unceasingly as Christ suggest; when you just read your Bible, no matter where you start; when you say 'Here I Am Lord, pick me."
I want to share, to listen, to be God with skin on, forgiving and caring. I want to feel the warmth …
But the hate …
Loneliness is a terrible state. Loneliness in marriage might be worse. We had lived our lives together, saying our daily I Love Yous. We had smiled and laughed most of the time, the majority of the time. We both loved our mothers-in-law. We were never in each others way. We seemed to be the perfect couple … cute … going to church, saying mediation to our children … carrying our crosses … smiling.
It all blurs together now. The man I was when I married Valerie: we were in love, and they were glorious days. We were broke, but we had fun playing, in love.
Then … there was the man I became: the man who refused to join her in going to church; the man who refused to think of his family first; the man who turned his back and tried to run away. She wanted me to be a father. I wanted her to be an even better mother. I think somewhere along the line I had stopped trying to be a father and a husband. But we would stay married forever, that's what she always told me.
My mind is full of lust. It is full of pride. It is full of greed. It is full of all the things that aren't from God. My hands tremble to sin. My feet carry me to the seas of sin. My eyes and ears deceive me, each blinding the other to the truth of God. Taking things out of context, holding grudges, and planting seeds for rage and anger and bitterness; it's the destructive nature of sin.
I want to get drunk under desire's red lights …
But when you want, when you take, when you are proud, when you are selfish, you are living in sin. And Sin is a miserable place with hate and deceit. We don't listen in sin.
Thank God, he has forgiven me today, set me free, given me the ability to break the chains. As Paul wrote: "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do." But you are not controlled by sinful nature, the Spirit is in control.
All you have to do is believe. Believe in I Am. Believe in the Son of God, the most pure, the most loving man, who lived and died and rose again and reigns forever. He has forgiven us. Now, if only I will accept it.
My God, I cried. … I yelled so loud. Put it all together: fear and tears and rage and hate and you get the idea? I didn't know it was in me.
Please, God, No!
My tears are long gone now.
Sometimes, God's missions for our life require the greatest sacrifices, stripping away all you know or think you know, tearing at the threads of impurity in tiny tugs. Then again, sometimes he just grabs the blanket you are hiding under.
That happened to me. One really big tug in November of 2001 that left me facing horror and shock and fear and sadness and rage and hate all at the same time. I had looked upon my life in the most crooked of ways and my marriage was falling apart around me because of it. Yet I had ignored it. I ignored the sin. I ignored the pain she caused. I ignored the pain I caused. I ignored it as I always did. I ignored it by not listening to her, to God.
So he pulled the blanket away. For the first time in my life, I realized that everything I thought was real wasn't, and everything that wasn't was.
Valerie and I have forgiven each other. Forgiveness is a wonderful place. It is where love flows. It's when you know what commitment is. For God's love is glorified by forgiveness. It isn't easy … forgiving. Forgiveness of tangible sins can be most uncomfortable to say the least. Sin is disgusting and it hurts bad. I think, I hope, I pray I have shed everything to achieve it. I trust, hope, that what I found is what he was pointing at.
But I feel God's support in my life. Today, he's trying to rescue me again. Forgive me, Lord, I did it again. I did it again, and again. Please God, give me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I Am has told me he will.
You can't receive forgiveness, without prayer. It's hard to find without study, it's harder to find without going to church, and it's just impossible without God's intervention.
You must answer the call … for he has chosen you. It may not be easy to do. But when you do, you will find support … support as represented by the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross, God to you and you to each other … the ultimate symbol of forgiveness. You can't have forgiveness without Love. For God is Love. So you can't have forgiveness without God. You can't have it if you don't ask. Most importantly, you can't have it if you don't believe.
I just have to believe in I Am.
Funny thing is, I better understand the laws of mathematics, and I was suspended by SIU in Carbondale for failing or refusing to understand those. But forgiveness … I think I am beginning to understand. I understand God forgives believers.
We can find forgiveness in so many ways: in baptism when Adam is drowned through our daily contrition and repentance; in the Office of the Keys; in communion. I seek it most for my daily life. But all of it requires one thing … you must believe in I Am … one omni-loving man … who lived, died and rose again, or if you at least believe in one tiny miracle that someone said he did.
The rest seems easy. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. So the first commandment is love. The second is love. And the third is …
It's easy to hate.
Divorce is what she wanted. Although she never actually said that, that is what she was telling me. No way it could be true, I said. Yet here I was a man who had asked for it. I see it now in my journal writings. How I was failing to love … to feel loved … to give love … to live love. I had destroyed our marriage long before. … not listening, not touching, not feeling, not really fathering, not really husbanding, just providing shelter for a beautiful woman who had found herself in a depression.
"I am cold-hearted and self-absorbed." Those were her words in November. They were my words, too, in action. Fortunately, in the realization of the end, a new door opened. In forgiveness, that is love, we could find healing … find joy. I can't say this enough … Forgiveness, my friends, comes through grace, prayer, action, study. You can find it in all things, but it comes only from God.
I started finding it almost immediately after we exposed our lies. The morning after … Sunday morning … I was sitting in church, with my children, crying, which is kind of an understatement. Please Lord. Help Me.
What happened next simply blew me away.
God, who was probably pleading with me to be quiet for once, started writing me notes. "Forgiveness" read the first one. "Forgive each other" read the second. They came within a minute of each other, written by my oldest children, Ryan and Rachael, who were 12 and 8 at the time. I cried tears of joy when I saw the notes, ashamed I hadn't thought of it. Yes … I believe God talks to us in some of the most amazing ways.
Forgive? I didn't have a choice. I had to forgive. I don't know how to explain this … I had to extend love to my wife. Forgive me for not forgiving Lord. Forgive me of my sins, as I forgive my wife's sins against me. Forgive me God. Please forgive me.
I am lost, how can I forgive her?
I am found. How can I forgive myself?
I am lost again.
As horrifying as it was to face the truth, it was far worse to continue with lies.
Lies to me are the worst sins, even though I actually know better. They kill the soul. They destroy will. They destroy life. They destroy love. They destroy from the inside out. They leave you in that awful smelling muck, the kind that sucks your shoes off.
The effects of lies reached everyone in my life … my wife, my children, my family, my coworkers. Come to think of it, don't all sins leave you that way?
Valerie and I lived our lives in lies. We lied to each other. We failed to share. We failed to love when we both needed it most. We backed away from facing our cross. We loved each other. And yet we lied to each other. We turned our backs to God and found ourselves in hell.
Our greatest lie … We showed one face to the world and another to each other.
But "God so loved the world …"
Believe in him and the spirit will set you free. He has already showered you with gifts. He will forgive you. Ask the Lord, pray to the Lord, to guide your life … he will. I Am said he will. I Am is the truth.
When you believe, He opens your heart to an amazing love, a glowing warm fuzzy love that calms and heals all wounds … I mean all wounds.
He will take your worn, bloody clothing, the clothing stained with sin, and he take the wounds too, if only you will allow him. "Come to the Water and stand by my side. I know you are thirsty, you won't be denied," he tells us. If only you will.
Forgive me Lord. He did. He does. He will.
The road to recovery he didn't say was easy. Sometimes it takes nine months; sometimes it takes ten years, twenty years, a lifetime. When you are going through it … the fear … the hate … it is terrifying.
"But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." I have heard that seemingly a thousand times. And until about two months ago, I think I took it for granted. But I believe it now. I feel it.
Of all the things you can do in life, forgiveness may be the most powerful. A great man, my father, once told me, "When you love someone, you owe them, you don't own them." I like that line. So … I owe God. I believe that is the way of God. Because I believe in Love, I owe you. I owe you everything. Why? Because it's like God is making me do something I enjoy more than anything does … that is to love and be loved.
Love is forgiveness and forgiveness is forgetting. Forgiveness is healing. It matters not what you do to me. It matters what I do to you. We don't own our brothers and sisters, sons, daughters, neighbors. We owe them. In love … there is a constant flow of giving. God directly supporting us. Us directly supporting each other, comforting the afflicted. I found comfort in church, by being church.
"My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and finish his work." Jesus says that in the book of John. Jesus was sent to forgive, to do the will of God. How can you want anything else? How does He do it?
It's the hardest thing, forgiving yourself, your spouse, your neighbor for the things in life. But the more I do it, or rather God does it … the better I feel. So, now, why hold on to anything? The cool thing is each time I open my arms to God; God opens his arms to me, and brings joy and happiness to my life. We can receive forgiveness every day, every minute of every day. Just believe. Just pray.
Forgive us of our trespasses, forgive us of our sins, forgive us of our bitterness, forgive us of our hate, forgive us of our disobedience and disrespect, as we forgive those who do these things to us. I like to add stress to as we. Do I want God to forgive me in the same way? I forgive you but I never want to see you again. Is that the way I want?
No, I want to change.
As Steven Curtis Chapman says it: "I got myself a T-shirt that says what I believe. I got letters on a bracelet to serve as my ID. I got a necklace and a key chain and almost everything a good Christian needs. While this stuff is all well and good, I can not help but ask myself, what about the change; what about the difference; what about the grace; what about forgiveness. What about a life worth showing that I am undergoing the change?"
God's Spirit lives inside of me. Because of it, "I gonna live life differently. I'm gonna have the change. I'm gonna have the difference, I'm gonna have the grace, I'm gonna have forgiveness, I'm going to live a life worth showing that I'm undergoing the change."
So what if they don't believe Lord?
Forgive them for they know not what they do.
We are the Church
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(I first wrote this as a personal witness in the fall of 2002 for a spiritual renewal program called "We Are The Church" sponsored by Trinity Lutheran Church in Peoria. It has been modified over the years.)
