Rediscover the Bible for Life
“It Begins With Forgiveness”
I wonder, how many of you reading this article thinks that people are weird? Now, how many of you think that while other people are weird you’re fairly normal?
That’s what most people think, that while others are weird they’re pretty much normal. But the reality is that we’re all a little bit weird, odd, and strange.
Now, while we may appear normal on the outside, inside we all have an inner weirdo.
What’s the point of this exercise in honesty? It’s because we have a hard time with relationships. Relationships at their best are difficult, hard, painful, and messy. Fortunately God understands that we’re all relationally challenged and in constant need of help when it comes to our relationships, not only with others, but also with Him.
Look at all the messed up relationships and the outright wackiness of those within the Bible.
Cain, the older of the first two brothers becomes jealous of his brother, Abel, because God honored Abel’s sacrifice and not his. So Cain goes out and murders Abel, thus losing his relationship with God.
Noah, who was the most righteous man of that generation, goes out and gets so drunk that he passes out naked in front of his kids. Now for those of you who went to Sunday school I bet you never saw that in a flannel graph lesson.
Then there is Lot who had some angels over for dinner. The people of Sodom, however, wanted to violate them; so being a good host, Lot offers his daughters instead. Later, his daughters get him drunk and get pregnant by him.
Abraham played favorites between Jacob and Esau resulting in bitterness that has descended to this very day.
And then when Jacob becomes a dad he does the exact same thing with his sons. The brothers became so jealous that they sold Joseph into slavery and told their father a lion ate him.
Have you noticed that I haven’t even gotten out of the book of Genesis, but just in this short amount of time we’ve seen a little bit of Sunday School, Survivor, and Jerry Springer.
Relationships have been messed up from the very start, which goes to the heart of why God places these stories in the Bible in the first place. He wants us to understand that we all need His help, and that nobody is immune to this relational difficulty.
We can’t love God and hate others. We cannot go to church and say we love God and want to work on our relationship with Him while we’re holding resentment in our hearts toward others.
There is only one way to get right with God and others, and it begins with forgiveness.
If we want a right relationship with God we need to ask for His forgiveness, and if we want to have a right relationship with others, we need to extend forgiveness.
