I don't know about others, but sometime I find that certain portions of Scripture have become so familiar that I hardly hear them. I have a superficial picture or idea of what they mean, read them again, ad think, Yeah, I know that, those words, and I move right on.
In the case of some biblical prayers, I might even use those familiar words as part of a prayer, but the familiarity of them sucks meaning and passion from them. I'm just being upfront and transparent here. Then something happens, the Holy Spirit maybe, and you see that passage a whole new way.
That happened this morning when I read the following words in the day's entry from A Daybook of Prayer:
I need forgiveness for myself--from sin, from debt, from every weight around my neck--and I intend
to live with forgiveness in my heart in my own dealings with others...And because I live in the real world, where evil is still powerful, I need protecting and rescuing. ( taken from N.T. Wright's book Simply Christian)
Couple thoughts: I know I am forgiven through faith, my sin debt removed at the cross, but daily confession is not to get rid of the sin, but to get rid of the wall of separation that comes between God and me, of my own making, that fruit of guilt.
So I do need to ask for forgiveness - I need to do the work of saying the same thing about my sin that God does, that as it grieves him to see me on a path that would ultimately separate me from him and his influence, in that same way, it grieves me. Sin offends God, not just because he is sinless and holy, but because he loves us and knows sin leads to destruction and pain and ugliness in our lives, and loneliness - as the distance created by sin pulls us further and further from the reality of his love.
So, in this model prayer, Christ teaches us to acknowledge our need for forgiveness...and every weight around our neck.... As I thought about what this might mean, because I think it is more than our own sin that weighs on us, I wonder if it could mean the sin that is done to us, and our response to it.
Sin done to us can become a source for, or an excuse for, or justification for - bitterness, for resentment, for anger, for revenge, and all of those things weigh on us like burdens. They eat at us; they make us ugly to ourselves and to others. They keep us from knowing the peace of God, and because Satan is the master liar, they keep us from even recognizing how these things and their weight keep us from God. No longer is the one who abused or hurt us the issue, but we are, our choice to stray from the fold of peace and beauty into the weedy field of burdensome anger and bitterness.
And Christ reminds us of the value of confession - seeing our behavior, all of it, from the perspective of God's eyes and heart. Hanging onto an unforgiving spirit does not hurt the offender; it only continues to hurt us. (side note - forgiveness does not mean that what the abuser did was alright; it means that you trust God to balance the books.)
Th final rewording of this part of the Lord's prayer struck me as well. Wright paraphrases the Deliver us from evil part by putting it very graphically in terms that struck me with its truth: praying about being delivered from evil does mean that I can get into the place where evil dwells, and I need rescuing from that storm, that dangerous place where I can fall over the cliff into destruction....or at least big-time damage and failure.
Rescue - what a powerful word bringing with it visions of flashing red and blue lights and emergency vehicles and hospitals and doctors and policemen; well, you get the picture. Someone is in danger of losing their lives and others are coming to rescue them or get them out of danger. Sin is like that. Temptation is like that. Dangerous, and I need rescue from it. I need God's intervention to help me see the danger, the allure, the excitement, as he sees it - a road paved with destruction and pain, my own. So I must pray for rescue, for an awareness of his presence, not just to rescue me, but to remind me to whom I belong, and to whom I matter, and to whom belong the keys of real love and peace and joy.
All of that said, and I am reminded of the value of reading the Word in a translation or paraphrase different from the one I am most at home in, to escape the hazard of familiarity.
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As I read your post, I thought about what tremendous changes must take place WITHIN us in order to forgive others.
ReplyDeleteGod is in the heart changing business – He removes bitterness and replaces it with rejoicing; He removes hopelessness and replaces it with confidence and joy; He removes despair and replaces it with eager expectation.
We are totally dependent upon God for the changes He wants to see in our lives. Yet, don't we also play a part and have a responsibility in those changes?
We need to be in fellowship with God lest the seed fall on stony ground – seed cannot bear fruit if it cannot plant roots. Like New Year’s Resolutions that are broken within days (hours) of when they are made, so it is with our ‘good intentions’ to forgive others without the power of God enabling us to do so.
When God changes the heart negative emotions fall away and are replaced by the fruit of the Spirit and His love. In our humanness, it is impossible to forgive, but God changes OUR heart to be like His so that not only can we forgive, we can LOVE the offender – again, and again, and again.
In direct opposition to reason, sometimes, it seems that the more we are offended, the more we love the offender. His grace is sufficient, nay, more than abundant when His love reigns in and through our hearts.