Day 203 - Radical Forgiveness

📖Daily Reading

Mark 1-2 

🎥 Video  

Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.

 

📝 Reflection 

 Mark 2: 5-11

    Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.”

 But some of the teachers of the religious law who were sitting there thought to themselves,    “What is he saying? This is blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins!”

    Jesus knew immediately what they were thinking, so he asked them, “Why do you question this in your hearts? Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk’? So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!”

 

I have to admit that I have had a day of unraveling after my encounter with God and his word today. The other text that got me was in vs. 22 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.” So I am going to do my human best to share my reflection today and that is good enough! Jesus was a radical and he spread a radical message and asked us to think radically and act radically. If he had authority on earth to forgive sins and his holy spirit is available to us then we must also forgive. 

The word forgive means to cease to feel resentment, to grant relief from payment of a debt. The history and origin of the word is for+give or before giving or pre giving. We hear a lot about how forgiveness is really for our own benefit and when we don’t it is like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt them, etc.. Again, I think Jesus is driving radically to the heart of the matter which is our own hearts. We can’t give what we don’t have. We have to forgive ourselves. He gave us that authority. When we don’t start with a new wineskin we can’t hold new wine. 

I have struggled quite a bit with forgiveness with a few people in my life. I am sure you have as well. I think I do and then I realize that I haven’t and I haven’t been able to quite figure it out. I am trying so hard to ‘be’ good in so many areas of my life, including forgiveness.  What I had an epiphany about this morning is that in my striving to ‘be’ good I am by that very striving not able to be good. This is the law of paradox that God set in place in the world. When I am considering my efforts good and when I do ‘good’ by the very nature of it I must also label other things, behavior and people as bad. 

What might happen if I stopping trying so hard to be ‘good’ in my own strength. What if I forgave myself for making mistakes and being human? Sounds kind of radical I know. I submitted myself and made myself just a willing vessel for God’s version of ‘goodness’ which is love and I got out of the judgment business and just loved myself and loved others. Simple but not easy. Or maybe just maybe it is easier than we think, but we have to be willing to give up our identities and our striving to earn love, even God’s love. We just need to receive and in order to receive we need to clear out the negative things we are holding against ourselves, so that way we might, we just might be able to forgive and to love others. “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

In vs. 16-17 “when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “why does he with tax collectors and sinners? When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

Are you holding onto unforgiveness for others? Maybe you need to look within and forgive yourself for not being whatever you are expecting yourself to be or not be, past failures, hang ups and hurts and what you expect others to be. This might allow you to receive God’s humbling magnificent love that might have you seeing others with more grace and love with out even having to ‘try’ so hard. 

Your particular way to get love may be to achieve,  to serve, to be strong, to be perfect, to be special, to be fun, to be knowledgeable, to be loyal, to be responsible. The Enneagram has been a very helpful tool for me. I think it is a tool that lines up with much of Proverbs, but it can be a tool that can help you to know yourself and others better. But God’s word is the ultimate authority and his perfect Love casts out fear and it is also beginning to free me to receive that unfailing love for myself. So maybe just maybe I can become a radical forgiver and radically love too. I am starting with myself and accepting my humanity and accepting that I am fully loved for just being.

 

 

✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt 

 Are you holding onto unforgiveness for others? Do you need to forgive yourself?

📖Tomorrows Reading

 Mark 3-4

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