Forgiving

Becoming a Believer, Forgiving, Grace, Prayer, Sibling squabbles

Toothpaste Tubes, Hearts and Granddaughters

gglukens Leave a comment

When my granddaughter, Hannah, was two years old, my daughter was reading a childrens’ book to her about the attributes of God. They got to the part about forgiveness.

Hannah asked, “What does that mean?”

Jasona tried to explain the concept to her.

Hannah asked, “Is that like God puts you in time out?”

“It’s more like God calls you out of time out,” Jasona said, as she turned the page of the book.

Hannah flipped the page back. “How does he do that?” she asked.

Jasona turned the page and said, “You pray to him and ask him to forgive you.”

Hannah flipped it back.

Jasona realized something was up, she asked, “Do you want to ask God to forgive you, Hannah?”

Hannah nodded.

“Do you want to pray or would you like me to pray for you?”

Hannah pointed at her mom.

Jasona prayed, asking the Lord to forgive any sins that Hannah had committed.

She turned the page again.

That was not good enough for Hannah. She flipped the page back.

“Do you want to pray yourself, Hannah?” Jasona asked.

Hannah nodded, closed her eyes, bowed her head and started to talk to God.

Jasona realized that Hannah was talking about the toothpaste tube. A couple of days before Hannah had gotten into trouble for squeezing all the toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube.

The remarkable thing about this story, for me, is that Hannah, at age two, had realized that something she had done, had defiled her. She felt the conviction. She found the relief in the grace of the Lord.

My mother had lots of life lessons she passed on to me.

One of them was this: “If you squeeze the toothpaste tube, toothpaste comes out.”

This is true, but what is in the tube may be unknown to us, hidden deep in the heart.

What she was saying is, “Whatever is in you will come out under pressure.”

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

Matthew 15:19

One day my daughter reprimanded Hannah, for something she had done to her younger sister, Audrey.

Later Audrey came to the kitchen and asked Jasona if she had ever done something mean to her younger sister.

Jasona answer that yes, she had.

“What did you do?” Audrey asked.

Jasona told her something she had done to Heather.

Audrey responded, “What were you thinking?”

Jasona said, “I don’t know, Audrey. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

After a few seconds, Audrey looked at her mother and said, “You were listening to the sin in your heart”


“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,

and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

Becoming a Believer, Believer's Path, Forgiving, Prayer, Walking by Faith, Witnessing

“Who Was Praying for You?”

gglukens 2 Comments
Janie

My sister, Janie, died in 1986 at the age of 33. She left her husband, two small children, her parents, five siblings and lots of broken hearts behind.

We think she died of pneumonia. She had called for an ambulance because she could not breathe. When the ambulance got there she was lying on the sidewalk in front of her house. She was not breathing. The ambulance crew inserted a breathing tube in her, but then her heart stopped. They got her heart beating again and took her to the hospital on life support.

She never breathed again on her own. She was in a stage four comma for two weeks before her heart stopped again. Hundreds of people came to her while she was in the coma. They wept and grieved with us. She had been working with Afghan refugees; they came to her bedside in droves.

Janie prayed, and served. One day I will write a blog post just about her, but for now, know that she prayed for me, and thousands of others.

When the roll is called up yonder, many, many will say to her, “Thank you for giving to the Lord.”

Before I learned to trust Jesus, I mocked Christians. I was young and dumb. At age 27 I was convicted of my sin, and radically saved. My conviction came when I realized how cruel I had been to my sister, Janie, while we were growing up. I was not just mean; I was cruel. Janie was the first of us six siblings to come to faith in Jesus.  I know she forgave me. I give her credit for praying me in. We know that God can cause all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. He even used my cruelty to my sister to convince me that I needed a savior. 

See the blog post about my conversion and the debt I owe to Janie here: https://gracegloria.com/2017/01/03/conversion/

Now, whenever I hear someone tell their story about how they came to faith in Jesus, I love to ask:

“Who was praying for you?”
They almost always know

It occurred to me to ask this question when one day I noticed at the end of the letter Paul wrote to the Romans, as he was sending greetings to everyone, he wrote, “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kin and fellow prisoners who are well known among the emissaries. They were in Messiah before me. Romans 16:7. Wow! I realized that some people in Paul’s family prayed for him while he was still persecuting the Christians! This is the power of prayer.

Over the years I have heard some great stories in answer to my question, “Who was praying for you?” I would like to tell you a couple of my favorites.

  • A man I met while I selling MSM cream at the Puyallup Fair let me know that he had become a believer as an adult. “Who was praying for you?” I asked. He laughed and said, “Back in those days I worked for FedEx. I had a delivery to make to the Tacoma Dome. I found the room where I was to take the package. When I burst through the door, I found the room full of people with their heads down, praying. I apologized for interrupting them. They said, ‘No problem, come and join us. We are getting ready for the Billy Graham crusade.’ I stood back, pointed at the clock, said, ‘That’s the only god I serve’, and left.” Now we laughed together. “Guess who was praying for me?” he said. “Years later, after I had been a Christian for quite a while, the Lord reminded me of that scene.”
  • Another man told this story. When he was a teenager, he couldn’t shake drug and alcohol. He would vow that he would never do it again, then his friends would pick him up for a party. The next thing he knew he would be high, and drunk, again. Finding himself in this condition in the back seat of a moving car one day, he hung his head in despair. “I just don’t know what the answer is,” he said to himself. Just then, he looked up and saw a sign that said, “Jesus is the Answer.” Okay, he thought, if Jesus is the answer, then I want Jesus. He was immediately sober, and saved! He knew it was a miraculous act of God. “Who was praying for you?” I asked. “My Young Life leader,” he said. “I went to find him at his college dorm. When he answered the door I handed him the Bible that he had given me and said, “I don’t need this anymore. I’m a Christian now. You can give it to someone else.” We all know what happened next. The Young Life leader invited this young man into his room and began to disciple him.

I love it!

  • Then this story: I heard a Muslim background believer tell her story. She had met Jesus in her bedroom when she was only four years old. She endured tremendous persecution from her family and community. Eventually she had to run for her life. She could not be persuaded to give up her faith in Jesus. “Who was praying for you?” I asked. She took time to look around in the room.  She pointed her finger at each of us. “Someone I DON”T even know,” she said.

Recently I was reprimanded by the Lord because I stopped praying for someone in my family. I had a vivid dream about it. I shared the dream with my daughter and told her the story about how I had stopped praying for this person. My daughter said, “Mom, how would you like to get to heaven and have the Lord ask you why you stopped praying for her?”

My daughter told me that I need to get intentional about praying for her. She suggested that I use the number of the month she was born, and the date, as a time to set the alarm on my phone as a reminder to pray. I have done that. I wrote a prayer on the notepad on my phone. Every afternoon when my alarm goes off, I read this prayer out loud.

I pray that the eyes of her heart will be enlightened that the light of the glory of the gospel will shine in her heart, and she will know the hope of your calling, Lord. I pray that she will know the truth and the truth will set her free. You are the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by you. Draw her to you, Lord; You who are able to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or think, to you will be the glory, before all time, now and forever. Amen.

Pray.

Jesus told us to pray.

Paul told us to pray:

In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. Ephesians 6:16-20

Jesus is the answer
Believer's Path, Forgiving

The Scariest Words from Jesus

gglukens 1 Comment

Matthew 18:34-35

Matthew 18:34-35  “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Matthew 6:14 “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

Is unforgiveness an unforgiveable sin? It appears so, doesn’t it? If we do not forgive, neither will we be forgiven. That is serious, and scary.

Forgiving those who have sinned against us was important enough for Jesus that he included it in the prayer he taught his disciples. “Forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who trespass against us.” How many times have we prayed this prayer and not really thought about what it means?

(Aside: in the same way we have prayed “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth. . .” and not realized that Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God coming to earth, not our going to heaven.)

How do I know if I have truly forgiven those who have sinned against me? What does it mean to “forgive from the heart”?

I have come to some clearer understanding of this lately.  Formerly when I would counsel people about forgiveness, I would start by explaining what forgiveness is.  There is a lot of misunderstanding about forgiveness. People usually think that if they forgive someone it means that what that person did doesn’t matter. This reaction may become evident when I ask someone to forgive me and that person says, “It’s OK. It doesn’t matter.” That’s wrong. It does matter. It matters to us, but more importantly it matters to God. This can also happen when I think about something that someone did to me. I could think, “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

It matters. We must examine our heart. We must remember the pain the sin against us caused. Now we are getting closer to “forgiving from the heart.”

One of the ways this is explored is to say to yourself, “I forgive so-and-so for doing such-and-such because it made me feel ___________________ you fill in the blank.

Graphic example: I forgive my uncle for sexually abusing me when I was eight years old because it made me feel dirty, defiled, and guilty.

Or less graphic: I forgive my fourth-grade school teacher for what she said about me in front of the class because it made me feel stupid and embarrassed.

We can’t just blanket everything with “I forgive everyone for ever hurting me.” That does not come from the heart.

Again, forgiving doesn’t mean that what the other person did to us was all right or that it doesn’t matter. Forgiving means that I am no longer going to let this sin against me control my life. I would tell people that only person I am hurting by not forgiving that other person is me. Your ex-husband is having a great time with his girlfriend. He doesn’t care that you have said, “I will never forgive him.”  It is like taking poison, and hoping the other person dies. So I used to tell the person I was counseling to turn it over to God. He can bring retribution better to that person than you ever could!  That’s what I used to say.

Recently I have learned that is not right. That is not forgiveness from the heart. Hear these words from the Bedtime Shema, a Jewish prayer to be said before going to sleep.

“Master of the universe, I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me or who sinned against me—whether against my body, my property, my honor or against anything of mine; whether he did so accidentally, willfully, carelessly or purposely; whether through speech, deed, thought, or notion; whether in this place or another place—I forgive every [person]. May no one be punished because of me.

The last sentence rocked my world. “May no one be punished because of me.” Or because of what he or she has done to me.

We have a responsibility to those who have wronged us to forgive them, for their sakes, as well as for ours. It is not a matter of turning them over to the Lord for retribution.

This illustration might help. Imagine you and the person you are forgiving are standing near the foot of the cross. You turn to the other person and invite him or her to come to the cross with you, to receive the same forgiveness that you have received.

Yeshua said to love our enemies, and pray for those who despitefully use us. Take the one who has wounded you to Yeshua. Ask him to forgive, just as he did when he said, “Father, forgive them.”