twenty-one

a year ago I posted a list of deep reflections and inspiring thoughts as the days approached my twentieth birthday. well....its almost birthday time again, and this is what i'm reflecting on...

  

i'm almost 21 ya'll.

forgive?

in  approximately 3 hours I am supposed to be leading my weekly bible study for junior high girls. the topic this week? Forgiveness.

In our entire study on womanhood, what it means to serve, what it means to encourage, give life, etc,....i have never felt so inadequate to teach about a topic as I do at this very moment.

Forgiveness? I'm the last person in the world who should be telling 11 and 12 year old girls how to forgive.

why just this morning I got in a huge argument with my sister, and I haven't spoken to her since. (except to text her and ask her to let the dog out when she gets home.)

i spent an hour last night talking with a friend about a situation that i am frustrated with, and i went away feeling far more angry and unforgiving than i did in the first place.

i am constantly holding grudges against friends that i love, and replaying instances in my head where i wasn't treated the way i wanted.

and ultimately, i don't believe that God forgives me. I haven't had a quiet time all week, and I think that as a result, God is angry with me and holding a grudge, just like I would do if I was Him.

when i think about forgiving someone who has really hurt me, i dont think about it for long. why? because forgiveness... its pretty much as impossible as flying.
But recall the little poem of John Bunyan:

Run, John, run, the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands,
Far better news the gospel brings:

It bids us fly and gives us wings.

the gospel is what enables me to fly. to forgive. the flying is forgiveness. just as God in Christ has also forgiven me. why? Because the death of Jesus satisfied God's demand, and my sin has been forever forgiven, and eternally washed away.

in the words of the hymn by Lewis Jones, circa 1899,

"Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood;
Would you over evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful power in the blood.

There is power, power, wonder working power
In the precious blood of the Lamb."

the power to forgive.

reformation day 2011

"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof grace - of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel - after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps - suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started... Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case." ~Robert Capon

 

 

by grace

"It is by grace that your sins are forgiven, and it is by grace that the wandering allegiance of your heart is reclaimed." - Paul David Tripp