#118 - I forgive you.

Good morning! Well... it's been a good morning so far. Not completely normal, but at least partially on schedule! SO... I have a pretty great "lesson" from yesterday. If you noticed, yesterday I did not post anything.... also... it was NOT my Day of Rest. I feel like after yesterday I know what a lot of people feel like EVERY DAY when they do not have a "Quiet Time" in the morning. 


So... let me lay out my day. Got up and ended up sitting at the table with the lap.... one thing led to another and I started finishing up some Christmas presents, doing this or that. 10 minutes turned into 1, 2, 3 hours. And before I knew it my morning was GONE! GONE! By the time I sat down, it was 1:15 in the afternoon! Sure, I got out my Bible, read a little. But really, when I opened up my journal, the Holy Spirit had things to say to me right away. This was what he said, "This is why you don't do other things in the morning. It will get you off and you will not have time for your Quiet Time and blog. It's OK. I forgive you. But LEARN!"


10-4! Eye, Eye Captain! I did reap the consequences of it though. I went about my day and it seemed a bit like a whirl-wind of chaos and busyness. Sure, I was still productive and got a lot of things done, but by 8:00 I was truly just exhausted. I was ready to go to bed. I don't typically feel exhausted at the end of the day. Normally, everything just is great, my day is great, I feel happy & refreshed throughout the day, and when it's time to go to bed, I happily hop in to snuggy with my hubby. But yesterday, it was most definitely different. Exhaustion & I felt a bit ragged. I have some friends who it seems like that is how their every day is. Just being in their presence I feel the spirit of chaos versus peace. And...I know that they have allowed life to steal their Quiet Time with the Lord, they have told me so. Well.... from experience, I have determined, it is MUCH better to have a quiet time than to not! SO, I'm posting a BLOG today! :-)

Proverbs 16:16 - How much better it is to get skillful and godly Wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.

Proverbs 16:32 - He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, he who rules his [own] spirit than he who takes a city.

Get skillful & godly Wisdom! You can do this any time of the day. Sure, an actual Quiet Time, time spent with just YOU, your BIBLE & journal, & the HOLY SPIRIT,  is a great time to receive skillful & godly Wisdom. It's a time when you are in a position open to receive, ready to receive & ready to write down WHAT you have received. It allows you to track your progress, your emotions, what you have read in the Word, what you feel like the Holy Spirit may be saying to you. (Don't know "HOW" to listen or hear His Voice....maybe this devotion will help too? "Who do you Follow" talks about how I learned to Listen.) 


Slow to anger. Have you ever know someone who just seemed mad all the time? Whenever you talk to them, they seem annoyed or angry about something. The word "joy" is NOT the word that comes to mind when you think of this person. Being "angry" is not always bad. If you remember, even Jesus got angry and went through a RAGE of turning over the money changers tables. He was angry because they were perverting the house of God. (Matthew 21:12-13) Anger becomes a problem when the seed of it takes root and controls your spirit and life. When forgiveness is forgotten, and anger takes control. 

• Ephesians 4:30-31 - And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God... Let all bitterness and indignation and wrath (passion, rage, bad temper) and resentment (anger, animosity) and quarreling (brawling, clamor, contention) and slander (evil-speaking, abusive or blasphemous language) be banished from you, with all malice (spite, ill will, or baseness of any kind). 

Did you GET THAT? Bitterness grieves the Holy Spirit! Quarreling, evil-speaking spite grieves the Holy Spirit! Let's rewind even a little bit further, you can see where you can be ANGRY without SIN! Really?! Check it out: 

• Ephesians 4:26 - When angry, do not sin; do not ever let your wrath (your exasperation, your fury or indignation) last until the sun goes down.

SO... are you angry? Well, if it's gone longer than 24 hours, we need to get OVER it! The spirit of anger will make us miserable! Day in & day out, the spirit of anger will cause us to walk in misery on this earth. So something happened to you that wasn't fair, are you going to allow that situation to make your LIFE miserable? Are you going to keep going back to that event and replay it in your mind. Replay it with your words? Retell the story of the injustice done to you? What about forgiveness? The seed of anger begins to eat at your heart and your joy and the spiral affects of it can be detrimental. The ONE thing that would hold someone back from forgiving is pride. (And I know of a verse, have you heard it? - "Pride cometh before the fall.") Forgiveness doesn't have to mean that you agree with it. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you have to believe what someone did was right. But forgiveness does allow us to walk in the blessing of the Lord. When we walk in forgiveness we are saying, "God, I'm walking in obedience to you. I am forgiving this person of the wrong that was done to me."  Unforgiveness is a BLESSING-BLOCKER! When you walk in unforgiveness you are holding something against that person. Jesus won't even LISTEN to you! Do you want to see scripture to back it up?! Matthew 5:24 - Leave your gift at the altar and go. First make peace with your brother, and then come back and present your gift. - Jesus won't even ACCEPT our gift to him if we hold unforgiveness in our heart. He tells us to, "GET UP! Go! When you have forgiven that person, THEN you may come back to me and offer a gift or ask for something. But right now, I DO NOT HEAR YOU!" 


Anger. If you are walking around in anger, there is someone you need to forgive. Maybe they didn't know better, maybe the situation was out of their control, maybe "HARK" maybe they just got into sin and said something or did something ugly - they are not perfect either! Or maybe you are walking around in anger with yourself. Maybe you are mad at something you did. Then today is the day to FORGIVE YOURSELF! Stop beating yourself up! Cut yourself some slack. 


Anger & unforgiveness only lead to the PROBLEM and do not lead to the SOLUTION. 


We are so close to Christmas. It is such a great season to be joyful. Choose this season, before Christmas that you are going to forgive. Forgive the wrongs done. Forgive the words said. FREE YOURSELF to be able to walk in the blessings that God has for YOU! HE is just WAITING for YOU to forgive. YOU CHOOSE. You are in the drivers seat of whether God is going to bless you. YOU choose to walk in bitterness, and no blessing or walk in forgiveness and the blessing! Today... who is it that you need to call? Who is it that you need to go see? Who is it that you need to say, "I forgive you." 

#90 - Some Truths Can Go Unsaid.

Good morning. It's raining here in Columbia. I'm still enjoying the morning though. Sometimes rain is nice. Out on my porch, it's rather comfortable. As I've been writing my book, it brings me to such different places.... the journey of going back in time and reliving some of the events. It is definitely not always fun. The heaviness of my heart this morning was then confirmed by the scriptures I read today. It's amazing how God does it. The importance of guarding our mouth, guarding our words.... that is what we are going to visit today. 

Proverbs 25:26 - Like a muddied fountain and a polluted spring is a righteous man who yields, falls down, and compromises his integrity before the wicked.

Psalm 25:7 - Remember not the sins (the lapses and frailties) of my youth or my transgressions; according to Your mercy and steadfast love remember me, for Your goodness' sake, O Lord. 

Psalm 55:14 - We had sweet fellowship together and used to walk to the house of God in company. 

Proverbs 31:26 - She opens her mouth in skillful and godly Wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness [giving counsel and instruction].

Well, it is a definite "Praise the Lord" that HE forgets our sin. The moment we ask for forgiveness, our sin is washed away. Like we've talked about lately, as far as the east is from the west, our sin is forgotten. What a wonderful thing! Though that is great, in regards to our words, when sin is accompanied with our words, things we have said, to some, those words may never be forgotten. 

I'll take you back to early on in mine and Tyler's marriage. We were young, obviously still growing in our walk with the Lord, as we still are, and just excited about life. Living life to the fullest. Accomplishing goals. Accomplishing dreams. Chasing God's calling on our life. (Still things we do today!) But, in all that, the key is, we were "raw". We were un-finished, definitely un-polished, and at times our zealousness maybe came off the wrong way to people. 

My best friend while I was in college still lived back home. I was most definitely focused on specific things Tyler and I were pursuing. We had some specific goals, with a time-line and we were very focused. It had been close to two years that I had lived in the south. Living several hundred miles away from someone, being newly married and someone taking the #1 'earthly' spot in my life, and in a focused pursuit of some goals left my friend feeling very unimportant. As I have thought back on the season in my life when we were best friends, it truly was sweet fellowship. We would spend hours talking about the Lord, so green, just so excited to seek Him out and learn about Him. We would read our Bibles together, I'd go visit her and we'd stay up late into the night talking about God and the hopeful plans for our life. Most of our late night talks did revolve around the "boys" in our lives. For me, it was Tyler. I couldn't get my mind off him. I just knew that one day God would reveal to him that he was going to marry me. 


We did have a sweet friendship. But until one day, she confronted my "lack of putting enough effort" into our friendship. It seemed this was a constant guilt trip I had been feeling whenever we talked. I felt frustrated and I felt smothered. Things had definitely changed. In my "raw" way, I finally told her the things I was pursuing with Tyler, my marriage and our goals in our marriage were more important. Yikes. Our conversation quickly ended. I felt horrible, but what I said was true. I maybe didn't have the people skills to do it more tactfully, but what was done was done. 


And that was the end of that. Our friendship never recovered. She was hurt. I was hurt. What I said and the way I said it definitely did not reflect the "law of kindness" like the Proverbs 31 woman. They were things that were true, they were my feelings, but they were not said in kindness. My invitation to be a bridesmaid in her upcoming wedding had soon been recanted, and our friendship left a dark pit in my heart. 


Sure... God forgave me. Many times over through the years that I talked to God about it. Asked for forgiveness, and even asked for my friends forgiveness, but what was done could not be undone. Forgiven, yes. Forgotten, no. 


Will anything ever come of the friendship I once shared? I'm not sure. She was a very dear friend during a very pivotal time in my life. A time when I needed a Christian friend, she was there. Sure, I felt a bit smothered at times.... but she was a great friend. 


I've learned from it. I'd like to say I'm more polished now, more studied in the Word, less raw. I know now, if we ask God's direction, seek His face, He always has an answer. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, it is an answer wrapped in kindness. And.... I have definitely learned that some truths can go unsaid.


Guard your tongue today. God will forget, but sometimes people have a hard time forgetting. If in doubt, don't say it, just be quiet. Some truths can go unsaid.