Unconditional Love: Rule # 9

My husband said quietly, “If you’re still talking about it, you haven’t forgiven it.” Forgiveness deletes stories.

I realized these hurts that I carry around were like cheap trophies boasting of no great win. War wounds continually picked at couldn’t heal, wounds not of nobleness and courage but of weakness and loss. Not a fireside story of inspiration. Why did I keep telling the hurt stories? The injustice stories?

. . . because I wanted resolution, restoration, justice

But forgiveness is not about resolution. It is about letting go, and that means to stop talking about it – unless it is a redemption story, a ministry story, a where-God-took-me-after-forgiveness story to teach others about forgiveness.

God shows us how to forgive. He shows us forgiveness throws sins into unretrievable places.

• He ” throw(s) them into the depths of the ocean!” (Micah 7:19)
• “as far as the east is from the west, “ (Psalms 103:12)
• “behind your back“ (Isaiah 38:17)

He WANTS to “remember(s) your sins NO MORE” (Isaiah 43:25). He does not retell how you have slighted Him. He sent His son to build that bridge of forgiveness to Him. He built it on the cross: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

Today, I walked away from the offense, the hurt. Crossed the bridge of forgiveness into a place of blessing, green pastures, milk and honey, shade, streams of living water, peace. The hurt stories and the injustice tales couldn’t follow me across that bridge – and I couldn’t carry them across. If I wanted to get to that place on the other side, I had to drop, fling or just set those stories and tales down.

Across the bridge of forgiveness, God will heal me, strengthen me – and the stories I tell will change, transformed by my forgiveness, my setting down.

Are you still talking about it?

Do you need to hit the delete button of your story collection?

Unconditional Love is a forgetful love, allowing the new man(woman) to emerge from the fire of redemption. Left in an ash heap are brutal, biting words, hands that broke, not built, time wasted, demeaning actions to others and self, the taker. . . .

“as far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins”(Psalm 103:12)

Welcome, embrace, encourage the new man, learning to speak a new language, extending hands that help, spending time building others, including self – and becoming a giver.

Are you seeing the New Man? Or is your view distorted by memories of the old man?

Faith is the Substance of things Hoped for; the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1)

Unconditional Love SEES the New Man, realizes the New Man has to grow, struggle, be imperfect just like all God’s children in the journey to God’s arms.

“Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32)

Thank you, Father,
My heart rejoices for the seed planters, the laborers who watered your love in another’s life, for the time for a lost child to turn around and begin the walk to you. Thank you for being a God of faith, who encourages His children to see the Fatherless, Fatherless because of a lack of relationship, and believe that You know how to bring them home. I pray Father, that you break patterns of response that do not see the New Man/Woman growing. I pray Father that you stay faithless words, faithless fears. I pray that your Unconditional Love give God words, God actions, God giving, God time, God hugs to build and encourage on this road he/she travels.