Grievance

P 3464 This is what restoration looks like.

/ DVH

“I appeal to you for my [own spiritual] child, Onesimus [meaning profitable], whom I have begotten [in the faith] while a captive in these chains. Once he was unprofitable to you, but now he is indeed profitable to you as well as to me. I am sending him back to you in his own person, [and it is like sending] my very heart. I would have chosen to keep him with me, in order that he might minister to my needs in your stead during my imprisonment for the Gospel’s sake.]. Perhaps it was for this reason that he was separated [from you] for a while, that you might have him back as yours forever, 

Not as a slave any longer but as [something] more than a slave, as a brother [Christian], especially dear to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh [as a servant] and in the Lord [as a fellow believer]. If then you consider me a partner and a comrade in fellowship, welcome and receive him as you would [welcome and receive] me. And if he has done you any wrong in any way or owes anything [to you], charge that to my account. I, Paul, write it with my own hand, I promise to repay it [in full]—and that is to say nothing [of the fact] that you owe me your very self!”

These verses come from Philemon V10-19. They make it clear that true reconciliation means real repentance and restoration. We don’t know exactly what happened here, but news of it must have reached Colossae because the people there knew what this young man had done. First of all — I just want to mention the bit kind of tacked on at the end: “if he has done you any wrong in any way or owes you anything, …charge that to my account…” here’s the punch line …’it’s me, Paul and I am writing this in person. I will repay you if it is necessary, …but you need to remember that you owe me everything!” Paul stood up for this young man and he put himself between Onesimus and judgment. 

It has been suggested that this young man sinned against Paul perhaps stealing from him, but Paul grabbed hold of God’s grace and went back into ‘love.’ His actions show us what God’s grace, looks like. Undeserved, and unreserved. Now he esteems the culprit highly. Paul knows Jesus and he is acquainted with His Ways so well, that this is his first and only response! In His mind forgiveness means forgotten, and he wants to get on about the business of today – leaving yesterday behind. He is still teaching the church, but now he is leading by example.

Repentance acknowledges a fault, without harping on the point, and it quickly heads toward reconciliation, restoration  and forgiveness. It seems to me that Paul may have wanted to go with Onesimus and act as a go between, to make sure this reconciliation was complete, hence the letter. But he was in jail so he could not do that. He is simply stating the truth, and giving the people at Colossae a chance to digest his words and enter into true reconciliation with this young man as well, and put aside their previous opinions of him.

Sometimes when someone deeply wounds us, we need to take a little while to digest what happened, and how we felt about it. It is interesting that Paul is not looking for a patch over this problem, he is far more interested in healing it. Paul wants this church to move on to a wider place. People are human, they make mistakes, and some terrible mistakes have extremely far reaching effects. It is wisdom to carefully take our time to clear up our own reactions, otherwise we can easily say yes … when our hearts are yelling NO-O-O! That can have terrible consequences.

But I have a word of caution, don’t let your feelings, or even mental or physical pain, keep you from forgiving others. Forgiveness is a spiritual transaction. It is a spiritual thing. I forgive that other person because God forgave me first. We don’t just do that in theory, we do it in practice. (Matthew 18:21) It’s not always easy — 70X7 is a whole lot of practice! When the Lord forgave us from the cross, He released His Grace into our lives in abundance. Now we have something tangible to give away to anybody who hurts us. We have His never-ending Grace constantly flowing toward us, and we can give it away freely, just by using our faith. We now have more than we will ever ever need … Grace is tangible, eternity is resting on it!

Whatever we concentrate on becomes bigger, and it can fill our vision the longer we think on it. So someone else’s sin can literally block out the SON in our own lives. What we need to do is to use the GRACE we’ve already been given, and remember we can’t afford to hide behind excuses. Revising someone’s sin and talking about it with others will just enlarge how we feel about it. We will get sucked deeper into a vortex of despair, anger, and the need for revenge. The reality is, outside of releasing His Grace into our situation, we can end up more stuck than we were before. And we will be ‘punished’ twice, once by the offence and the second time by our reaction to it.

I am not saying that other people’s sins can’t devastate our lives, prayer and support are often needed. But we must choose to change our focus, otherwise we will remain a prisoner of that other person/s sin. Here’s something that helps me – this person who deeply hurt us cannot go back and undo what they did. This is now your story. Like it or not. Now your story is affected by scars. Jesus has scars too. We need to focus on moving past the event — for the sake of our faith.

If that other person does not choose to change, then prayerfully continue to love and pray for them, from a distance — let your inner self be less available to them. However, at the same time, we need to remember that we can often distance people to make ourselves comfortable, without asking the Lord what His plan is! Forgiveness can be so difficult whether we have a real or perceived grievance. It tests our faith. But we have inherited, from Christ Himself, a ministry of reconciliation. True restoration shows our gratitude to God for what He gave us. Bye. 👋.

P 2995 Controlling our mouths …

/ DVH

…is actually the biggest part of our daily battle … because speaking well of people is essential for our new language of love, so we all need to learn it. After all, the spirit of self-control needs to set its fruit somewhere … why not our tongues?

“Do not LET any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29. Here’s something I’ve learnt about myself that may benefit someone else. Sometimes the best response to something negative someone else says to you, is to smile — remember to include your eyes —and say nothing. Listening is a fantastic skill. Humility listens. Most angry people will de-escalate if we are prepared to give them a hearing. While I am listening, or trying to, I am inwardly praying: “Please help ME Holy Spirit, my feelings are out of control.”  

As we seek to truly love one another, reconciliation must never be far away from our minds. We cannot afford to make any argument a competition about who wins and who loses. If we start keeping score it adds to the anger. One of the participants in the problem is going to have to put their grievance – their sword– down. The best way to do that, is to start with an apology.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Proverbs 15:1. So it is good to say neutral things like: “I’m sorry you feel like that, and I have obviously hurt your feelings. I apologise.Please forgive me.” And then continue to say nothing. While we are busy defending ourselves, we aren’t loving that other person – we are empowering our flesh.

Loving each other is the secret ingredient to watching whatever we say. People who fall in love with someone else, watch their speech. The thing is, it is not good for our personal spiritual well-being to be a hypocrite, and love some people and not others simply because: “Love covers a multitude of sins …” It covered OURS!

Please understand that when we act in faith, with a spirit of reconciliation, we are not necessarily validating what the other person is saying – we are simply choosing to obey scripture: “First take the LOG out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see the splinter.” Matthew 7:3-5. None of us are blameless. What does it matter if we are falsely accused? What does it matter if we lose an argument? We might win the war by appearing to lose. The walls of Jericho came down because of a long silence, and one well-placed shout of victory!

Very few people walk up to someone else and punch them in the face FIRST! Arguments usually start with words, and then things grow exponentially as we use more and more words, and move on into hurling spiteful responses at each other and bringing up the other person’s past misdeeds. That’s the time we need to remember that we cannot control another person’s actions or reactions, we have to start with ourselves first. Maybe His Grace in our lives – which we get from spending time with Jesus in the secret place – has been diminished by the troubles and cares of this life.

“LET your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:6. One of my favourite preachers from the Brownsville Revival used to say – “this thing right here … (and he would point to his tongue) – that’s the thing we all need to be aware of.” “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be so.” James 3:10. But it obviously IS so, because God Himself tells us through James …that it should not be so! This is where our personal test of obedience kicks in.

The next verse is the secret to overcoming all that. We cannot afford to live this life forgetting, for even a second, WHO we belong to now. “Little children, you can be certain that you belong to God and have conquered them, for the One who is living in you is far greater than the one who is in the world.”1 John 4:4 TPT. You see our confidence is not in our ability to conform, or even perform – our confidence is in Him. It is not in me or you … it’s IN HIMI We believe and have faith in His ability to conquer whatever situation we find ourselves in — after all He conquered DEATH! Therefore my big mouth is not a problem to Him. 

All this is possible because we belong to Him and He lives in us. We have a God Who saves us, and Who lives in us! He has already saved us from the sin we will perpetrate against someone else by what we’ve said. Because of the Lord Jesus we have the deposit of self-control within us, by His Grace. All we need to do is to release it, using our faith. Controlling our mouths is the biggest part of our daily battle. Bye 👋.

P 2724 Love …

/ DVH

… the all purpose, all seasonal garment— that freely leads to praise and worship. I fall in love with our God over and over again, because He has so generously provided us with a way to please Him and live at peace with others. Jesus has already given us the Way we can be reconciled, and the Holy Spirit shines His torchlight upon the right path. Actually, to be perfectly truthful, the Holy Spirit often says to me … in a nice way, of course. “Don’t say it, don’t do it, don’t throw a party for that thought.” OK, so the bible says don’t “entertain thoughts” – same thing.

So today let’s look at Colossians 3. Love is a positional thing. It depends upon where you think you are seated. And I am not talking about being seated on your lounge, or on a chair! We are now, today, in this moment — seated in a new kingdom, where we choose to set our hearts on eternal things. We look toward Jesus because He started our faith and He will finish it. His precious blood bought that for us! Most of the time we fall down disagreeable holes because we get preoccupied with the stuff going on around us.

I know that a screaming baby, or a rampant selfish teenager, or an illogical argument with an angry spouse, or even a particularly pedantic elderly person, all have a way of grabbing at our thinking and attention. BTW, I think that those scenarios don’t help our teeth either … we can end up grinding them down to a NUB! Things like that happen and they don’t just happen once. That is the hardest thing of all! … instead they happen over and over and over again! … until your nerves are shredded and you want to go jump in the river.  Fortunately we have no eligible rivers near our house!

But when things get really severe that other person might well want to chuck YOU in that river. 😶 Meanwhile our own selfish tendencies that want to strangle someone else, need to be put to death. Sigh. So how do I personally do that? I remove myself before I get to the strangulation or the utterly unbridled abusive stage. I go somewhere else and talk to the Lord. At the same time, I don’t shut my inner ears to Him talking back to me! God is on my side, but He will not let me off the hook for whatever I did – He does not take sides. Do I get my attitudes right all the time? Of course not! Every now and then my temper takes over and I give the other person a serve. Not a point to be excited about trust me, the fall-out is appalling.

Here’s something to chew on in those moments – and NO! It is not comforting, or soothing … it requires obedience. Colossians 3:8-10 says: “But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

Here’s something my Mum used to say to me in a threatening voice: “Watch your mouth.” Always remember one unpleasant thing can lead to another! So this is how you deal with moments like these … you tell yourself “BOTHER – I’M WEARING THE WRONG CLOTHES!” and then you refuse to make excuses for yourself while whatever it is, is going on. Get to the place where you can say, ‘I’m so sorry’ quickly! That’s the exit!! Then shut up. Excuses or accusations actually add to the general feeling of unrest. So don’t do that either. 

There’s this really cool spiritual gift, that is a part of our new blood-bought clothes that Jesus bought and paid for … it’s called self-control. Oh, this is such a complex garment! It is needed in all sorts of situations. Self-control helps me to make the kind of decisions that allow HIM to take over. Now let’s look at what our new clothes actually look like … just so you don’t pick the wrong ones when you are getting dressed! 

12-16a: Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly …”

The best thing to ask yourself in any moment of difficulty is this – where did my peace go? And no! The answer is not … he/she/they stole it. The answer is where did YOU lose it? Peace is our portion as well as our umpire, we can’t afford to lose it … but that’s for another day. Today we are talking about a Christian’s wardrobe and what we need to wear to thrive, not just survive.  And love covers a multitude of sins – not just your sins – THEIRS. Bye. 👋