The Heart of God....Forgiveness!

Have you ever just sat back and thought about the heart of God? It is really hard to comprehend if you think about it.

In a book I've been reading I came across this statment that really hit home to me. It said, "On the cross, the entire weight of the unpayable debt owed by sinful humanity would fall on Jesus. He would pay it all. This is why the cross is at the heart of Christianity. It shows us the heart of God."

You see I believe the one person whose heart we can truly see is God's because He showed it to us through the cross. Did you know that our God is a compassionate God? He is. His eyes fill with tears, his lips tremble a little out of love for His children. You see, He chooses to pay the debt we never could. And most importantly......He longs to FORGIVE! Yes, forgive. He longs to forgive you. Does that bother you sometimes? It does me, because forgiveness is something that just doesn't come very easy for most of us, but for God....it's His heart.

So what is forgiveness in your heart?

I think we all have to remember that forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing. Forgiveness is what is required precisely when there is no good rationale to explain away why someone did what they did. When an action is excusable, it doesn't require forgiveness.

But forgiveness is not forgetting either. Forgiving is what's required precisely when we can't forget. You see God made us with the capacity to remember things. For that I'm thankful. But it can also be a burden. Forgivness helps us get past that.

Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciling either. Forgiveness and reconciliation are two seperate things. Forgiveness takes place within the heart of one human being. Reconciliation requires that rebuilding of trust, and that means good faith on the part of BOTH parties.

But most importantly I think forgiveness begins when we give up the quest to get even. Wow, this is so difficult, because getting even is the natural obsession of our wounded soul. You want to gossip about that person and you even have those moments where you like to hear something bad has hapened to them. But when those feelings are in your heart, you're headed down the wrong road. Only when you feel good things for someone who hurt you badly will you know that God has been at work in your heart.

You see, forgiveness requires a new way of seeing and feeling. One thing that happens when we get deeply hurt is that as we look at the one who hurt us, we don't see a person - we only see the hurt. We want to forget his or her humanity. But when we forgive each other, we begin to see more clearly. We do not ignore the hurts, but we see beyond them. We rediscover the humanity of the one who hurt us.

So let's all remember.....we are always to pursue forgiving people who have hurt us, even when the offenders don't ask for or deserve it. God commands us to forgive because it is the best way to live. Don't ever forget the story of the cross....forgiveness. Therefore, He commands us to forgive others because He has forgiven us. Of course He has....that's His heart!

-Gregg