Forgiveness # 6 Accepting forgiveness. Carroll UMC 5/17/2020

Forgiveness # 6 Accepting forgiveness.

Carroll UMC 5/17/2020

 

She sat in my office, in my grandma’s rocker, her knuckles white as she clutched the arms of the chair as if it was an electric chair. She had cancer at the age of 35 and might not survived. She stopped by to talk and reflect on her life as one does when they face their mortality. She started talking about how she deserved cancer and she deserved to die. I invited her to explain what she meant. That is when she grabbed the chair as if she were about to fly down the first hill of the roller coaster.

She began to tell her story. She became pregnant at the age of 16. When she told her parents, they were more worried about their image than about her or the baby.  “Don’t you care anything about us?” “How could you do this to us?” And then they put her in “exile.” They took her out of school and kept her at home because she was “an embarrassment.” In the hospital they would not allow her last name to be put on the door of her room; just her first name. They forbade her to name the child and forced the nurses to remove the baby before she saw it or held it. (And I say “IT” because they wouldn’t even tell her what the gender the baby was.) She believed she was a disgrace, a shameful blot on the family name, a whore, a tramp, stupid, foolish, and everything else people had said about her. She had been carrying this with her for almost 20 years. Is it any wonder she had cancer? 

The studies prove unforgiveness will kill us. I am sure that being unforgiven, and its twin siblings, guilt and shame are just as deadly. Guilt and shame metastasized in this young woman’s body, long before cancer came along.   The woman who sat in my office that day is among millions of people who live with toxic and maybe even deadly levels of guilt and shame. No matter how many times they hear “God forgives sin” “You are forgiven” “For God so loved the world” it doesn’t penetrate to the cellular level and they live in their own personal hell.

What do we do when the grudge we hold isn’t against anyone but ourselves? When our inner critic takes control of our thoughts, shouting things like:” How could you do that? Shame on you. You’re unlovable and unforgivable.”  When we feel like we can’t accept forgiveness for ourselves and don’t deserve it anyway; we’re in a battle we can’t afford to lose. Because here’s the hard truth: Unforgiveness will kill us and forgiving others isn’t possible without first forgiving our self.

 Accepting Forgiveness isn’t actually about the other person. Accepting Forgiveness is a decision I must make for myself—a decision to set myself free from my self-constructed prison of the past so that I might be free today.

 

Let’s clarify a couple of things before we talk about how to accept forgiveness.

 First, I am trying not to use “forgive ourselves.” We aren’t talking about being all-powerful and absolving ourselves from our sins. When we say, “I just can’t forgive myself,” the first response is, “Correct. You do not have that power. If we did, what would we need Jesus for?”

The second response is we are already forgiven… if we will accept it.  God is anxious to forgive us, and in fact, sacrificed everything to make that possible… but we must accept the forgiveness to be set free from our self-constructed prison of guilt and shame.

 The other thing I want to clarify is that guilt and shame are not the same things.  It is really pretty simple. “Guilt is I MADE a mistake,” It has to do with actions, and these are the things that often hurt other people

 Shame is a belief that we are the mistake.   Shame is about who we are, not what we have done. Where guilt is saying, “I made a mistake,” shame is saying, “I am a mistake.”   Guilt is saying “I broke something” shame is saying “I am broken.” Now, there is truth in saying we are all broken. You know, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Jesus died for our brokenness as much as for the things we break. “The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then joint-heirs with Christ.” The trouble with shame is that it robs us of the confidence in God’s love. Shame is a lie that can beat our self-esteem down so low that we think we are unlovable and unforgivable. None of that is true. But shame is like a cone of silence shuts out God’s love.

 

 That takes us to 1 John verse 7 that Emma read today. “If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” This directly addresses both guilt and shame.  If we walk in the light of Christ, guilt cannot eat us up. If we walk in the light of Christ’s love, shame has no power over us. The bible does not leave any room for doubt… we do not deserve forgiveness, but by faith, we are offered that which we can never earn or deserve. Jesus never said, “you get what you deserve.”  He said things like: “Your sins are forgiven” and “go and sin no more.” Understanding that God really loves you and wants to forgive you; is the first step in accepting forgiveness.

Do you remember the 3-step process I used to describe how we forgive others?  Rehumanizing them, giving up our expectation of justice, and change our attitude toward them to bless them.  Notice how the process of accepting forgiveness fits with that.

 

 The second step in forgiving is to stop expecting the other person to come back and fix everything. Similarly, in accepting forgiveness we must give up the expectation that we can put everything back the way it was. We cannot travel back in time. We cannot erase what we have done. It doesn’t work that way.

So, the second step in forgiveness is to fix what we can. and then we must let go of the illusion that we are a time traveler and can unsay, unhurt, unbreak, unkill, or in any way undo what we have done. 

 

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 Finally, if we are confident in God’s love

If we fixed what we can,

Now we take ownership of our sin and try to do better.

Our passage says “. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” If we make excuses, deny it, minimize it, shift blame, and do our best to make ourselves feel better about what we have done, the truth is not in us. “If we want to be forgiven, we must own up and confess our sins and learn our lesson.

Learning a lesson is called Repentance…includes a commitment NOT to commit that sin again. We don’t receive forgiveness if we plan to repeat our bad behavior in ten minutes. It doesn't work that way. We need to repent rather than repeat. We need to turn around. That’s what repentance means.  “So, we confess our sins. He who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”   There is no might, no should, no footnote, no exceptions “he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  You can take that to the bank. 

Now if God forgives us done is done. Too often we want to go back and dig up our sin again. Don’t but if you do, if the guilt or shame comes back Just start over again and claim your forgiveness again. There is no limit to God’s forgiveness. Jesus said we might have to forgive someone else 70x7 times… if need be God will forgive us 100 times-- 70x7 times. When we are forgiven again, we give thanks for God’s grace and we try not to dig it up again.

 

Reminding ourselves that we are a child of God, fixing what we can, and confessing to God with repentance in our hearts. 

Here’s the deal: Holding onto guilt and shame is kind of like holding onto a cactus. It hurts and you know it hurts but we refuse to let go. No child of God needs to spend their life hugging a cactus. You are a child of God. You are better off without the cactus. Put it down and walk away.

Christ died for us while we were yet sinners;

that proves God's love toward us.

In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!

 

Video… Stories of Forgiveness - Bruce