However, when I laid down to take a nap I just couldn't rest without putting my thoughts out there. This past Sunday my pastor did a sermon on forgiveness. The forgiveness we should show towards others, ourselves; and the forgiveness God has given to us. There are things I have bottled up, things that I hide, and maybe if we all got real honest you'd all agree and could say the same for yourselves. When we walked in we were given a rock, which in the end represented something we were holding on to. Our faults, our failures, someone who wronged us, you put a name and face on it... but basically whatever it was that was hindering you from being right with God.
I went down front. I went down like I have several times before. Everytime I've felt like I've finally "let go" it always seems to catch up back up with me. It's never that I don't really want to let go, its never that I don't sincerely pray and take action on it, but I think I've finally put my finger on something that plays a key role in it all. I've always grown up knowing all there is to know. Knowing what it is to have faith, knowing what it is to have God's grace and mercy. Since Sunday, obviously I'm feeling like I picked that rock back up, and maybe a couple more along the way. I've had a few talks with people about the matter and came to what I feel is the problem. Sometimes I think its not that we don't sincerely want to let go, or that we don't do what we ought to do, but rather we put too much emphasis on what WE are to do rather than what God has promised and can do. Its a funny thing since its not a new concept to me. I've learned through several circumstances and from a very good friend of mine that our faith should never be in what we can do but what God can do. Ultimately WE can't let go of whatever it is. Ultimately our minds cannot wrap around the idea of grace, simply because its not something thats logical. When we put too much ourselves into it, we let our logic get in the way. Grace is something we can never fully understand. Faith is something we can never fully understand. Letting go is something we can never fully do if we don't trust God to intervene. I understand that we have to play a role, we have to forgive, we have to move forward; but how can we do that without Christ?
For me personally I'm finding that my faith is weak and deffinetly not directed where it should be. I think its safe to say when we find ourselves unable to let go, and to press forward from something holding us back after we've already asked for that forgiveness, that we aren't fully trusting that God has forgiven us. When we find ourselves unable to forgive ourselves, we aren't fully allowing God to break down the walls he's dying to take down. We we find ourselves unable to forgive ourselves, we aren't letting God be God in all of our lives, and we are diminishing God's true power to conquer anything and everything in our lives. I don't say all that as someone whose mastered this, but someone dying to let God be God; and know that no matter what I do or don't say He is still who He is, and is capable of so much more than I can fathom. I just thought I'd share my mixed thoughts!
"Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with enteral glory. The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful-- for he cannot deny himself"
2 Timothy 1:10-13
God is still God! He cannot deny himself!!!
