The roadmap to freedom in the middle of lockdown.

Getting the news a week or so back that we would continue in intense lockdown for at least another two weeks sent me into something of a tailspin. Perhaps, like many, I’d been holding on to the belief that we would be able to at least lift some of the restrictions. But no. The hopelessness, powerlessness and despair I was feeling about our circumstances was threatening to overwhelm me.

Seeking the Lord for a way out of this emotional space, one that I could engage with, I found Him challenging me anew from an unexpected direction.

The answer was in forgiveness.

Forgiving someone I have no relationship with, no personal ability to impact (at least humanly speaking) but who had a great deal of power over me and my life was a whole new level for me, but I knew it was the answer for my true freedom. And even as I was struggling with this challenge and my lack of desire to forgive, I had a vision.

Jesus, face filled with joy and perhaps some amusement, pointed to something I was clutching in my hand, holding tight to myself. It was like He was giving me a playful poke: “what’s that you’re holding?” Looking at what He was showing me, I saw a black sticky ball of muck. Straight away, I knew what it was. Bitterness. Anger. Resentment. Frustration. The question was obvious. “Do you want to hold on to all that muck?”

No!

I am well aware that forgiveness is often not easy. However,

If we refuse to release our anger, our bitterness, our hatred, our resentment, I would suggest forgiveness is impossible.

In fact, the picture I had would suggest lots of things are pretty difficult to do when we are clutching a bundle of blackness to ourselves, not to mention the way it contaminates everything we touch.

As I observe many interactions on social media filled with vitriol, anger, belittling and other negative output toward people who have different opinions on either side of what has become the “great divide” of beliefs about pretty much everything these days, I see that

forgiveness is vital to the way ahead.

But it is not easy.

In my own involvement in a reasonably low-level disagreement, I realised the exceptional power of the drive to justify and defend ourselves. To step back and not respond, and especially to choose not to escalate, is tough, especially when others respond with emotive and irrational accusations.

In my own reflections about how to forgive someone I believe to be in the wrong, I heard Jesus’ words echo down through the ages:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.

Jesus underwent arguably the most unjustified conviction, punishment and painful death, and yet, in the midst of it, He could forgive the perpetrators. How?

Lately, I have found myself reflecting on the idea of Creator God being the Righteous Judge. Too often, it seems we use this to claim His favour toward us, that He will back “me”, because I am in the right. We take our own beliefs, (generally well justified, even if only by ourselves and our support crew), about who or what is good or evil, right or wrong, and overlay them on “God the Judge” to prove that “I am right and you are wrong”.

A major problem with this is that I don’t see the line between good and evil are so much of God’s focus. I think the view He takes in His judgement, the main trajectory of His desire, is much more regarding whether our actions and beliefs lead to life, or lead us to death.

It reminds me of the situation of Joshua at Jericho (Joshua 5:13), where Joshua encounters the angel of the Lord and asks whose side the angel is on. The angel’s response: “No”. In other words, he was not on one side or the other. An article I read recently as I was looking deeper into the concept of “Yahweh Sabaoth” as the Lord of Hosts, suggested similarly to this:

God is not about being on my side or your side, but about fulfilling His plans.

Perhaps it is we who are either on His side or not and perhaps it is time we took ourselves off centre stage and put Him back on! (But that is for another discussion…)

Coming back to forgiveness, I am realising our difficulty with forgiving lies in our judgement. “But Lord, they are wrong and I have been wronged! I won’t let them get away with it! Can’t I at least justify myself, prove to them that I am right and they are wrong?” I see Him with His finger on the big red buzzer. BZZZZTT! Wrong answer!

Forgiveness means I have to lay down my right and desire for personal justice, for personal vindication and exoneration. Sometimes God may grant these to us. Often (in my experience), He doesn’t, at least not in the overt way we might like. In the end, we have to lay all this desire down and allow God to be Judge. Only He knows all the details, all the heart motivations, not to mention the future and how it all ties into His plans, so only He can judge perfectly.

While we hold on to our own judgements about situations and people, we effectively “throw a spanner in the works”, at the very least in our personal journey and connection into His plans. If we want to see His perfect judgement at work, we need to lay down our own judgement (remembering that it will be by the same standards we will be judged – see Matt 7:1,2), which means forgiving:

“Not mine to punish, Lord, not mine to convict, not mine to determine the outcome and direction. I TRUST YOU to be the Righteous Judge and bring about Your judgements and outcomes in Your timing to maximise LIFE and because it will bring about Your purposes, just at the right time.”

The real kicker is, though, this is not something we can simply give intellectual assent to and move on. Unless we do the actual work of forgiveness, speaking it out, we will remain stuck. It can be tough, it can take time, and it can be a very real battle with our emotions - often it is an act of our will well before our emotions come along with us. To be the true Body of Christ, to be His pure Bride, though, we must shift out of the mentality of division and breaking unity, of holding on to our need or desire to be right over relationship, or we will not be able to partake in all that He has for us. But more on that soon!

(And if this is something that you struggle with in how to process it all, or just want someone to walk the journey of forgiveness with, please don’t hesitate to contact me. It would be my privilege to walk with you on this.)