Forgivenness is on CENTER stage this morning...

I am not always good at follow through even though I pride myself in being a woman of my word. I do the things I don’t need to do and the things I don’t need to do I finish before needed! (Just an addition to the cry of Paul said not an omission, I assure you.) I feel like I'm in one of those dreams at times when I want to run and can't move even my arm! Because of my failure in this, people are left in the dust when they would have been coming with me in closer detail! The masterpiece of the body is not realized in my life-work as it could be because I'm not following through - that's how serious this is. Those same "others" can’t even help if I don’t finish and give them what’s needed to do so. I feel a need to defend myself, but for the sake of seeing my sin (however small or large when compared to "others") as it really is before Him and compared to Him and the power that I have at my finger tips to do what's right…I refrain from trying to speak in my defense any further. I am guilty as charged. I don’t want to become the focus of this segment….there’s something much more worthy. His forgiveness takes center stage...His presence has entered the courtroom.

If I were to replay the tape from this morning, you would have heard my confession to the Lord…it's emission was ugly. But what happened next was beautiful and amidst the rubble and destruction so evident of my life, I stood in the middle bleeding from the shrapnel of my self-detinated habitual bombshell (hitting many more than me) failures, but unscathed it seemed in my heart. Why? Forgiveness,like a modern day Calvary arrived and infiltrated the lies of the enemy like penetrating light illuminating, healing, and disintegrating the guilt that had been dehibilitating me from within.

The truth about forgiveness is that I get a new beginning even when everything is not figured out and things aren’t yet finished or fixed. I get a new beginning in my heart. I’m healed and starting in the same outside muck but I’m not clogged with muck on the inside anymore! I am healed and forgiven – seen as clean and able with His strength. BECAUSE I trust Him…. “Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence. For the king trusts in the LORD; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.” (Psa. 21:6-7) If I’m trusting in You then I won’t be feeling unforgiven or the same after I have asked forgiveness…I won’t be looking at the muck, I’ll be looking at You and finding joy in Your presence!

Oh the thought that You would avail Your presence to me – SUCH a failing sinner! I could name my short-comings (in comparison with You) for the rest of my days and still not be finished. Yet, You choose to give me the opprortunity and plead with me through the reality reminder...a vivid "memory" of the agony of the most cruel death in all of history that I might live in the forgiveness wrought through it! What LOVE! What GRACE! Why would...how COULD I bare to deny availing myself of your forgiveness that You gave Your life to put before me. I’m still standing in the midst of failing, of past regrets, and still more unfinished work...it all has the potential to take years to overhaul, make right, and finish and yet You offer me forgiveness NOW!

LORD, this is my prayer….that I will see Your victory (that You’ve endowed to me) instead of my failures. That I will instead be overwhelmed with what gives me life instead of what is trying to pull me away and distract me from the WAY the TRUTH and the LIFE. I ask You to forgive me for not following through with what I know to do, and for doing what I don’t know is needed instead of facing the bullet of what I really need to do. Let me realize that I’m indestructible when You and Your forgiveness is at hand. I can never crumble inside if Your presence is there to hold me up. Your forgiveness is the bedrock of my stable existence…that I can know You….what could withstand that force?
Father You are good...Take over, Lord!