During our Kingdom group, we talked about the letter writing exercise (and how most of us didn't do it!), an exercise that several of us had done in the past however. While we were discussing all of this, it came to my memory of the time that I wrote one of those letters myself. I was 19 years old and wrote a (never mailed) letter to the neighborhood boys/young men who had terrorized, humiliated and raped me for 12 years, from the time I was just a baby of 4 until I was 16. At 19, I was battling depression and other destructive patterns of behavior and finally sought help. It wasn't a letter of forgiveness, actually, but a letter of unburdening myself with all of the garbage they had laid on me that I had decided wasn't mine to carry around any longer -- the anger, the self-doubt, the low self-esteem, the fear, the self-loathing, the loneliness, the terrible pain so deep and so wounding and yet so close to the surface I could almost hear it screaming -- and the shame. The terrible, terrible shame that followed me for years afterwards, long into my adulthood. I told them none of that belonged to me any longer, it wasn't mine to begin with, and I was giving it back to them to carry around. I was too tired to
do it any longer. It was more of a letter that said "Take this back, you jerks. FEEL the pain! FEEL IT! LIVE IT! SUFFER the same pain you made ME suffer!"
I guess I thought that was "my way" of forgiving
them.
And I thought it worked. Until the subject came up that
night in group a couple of weeks ago. As I was telling others in my group about this letter I wrote 25 years ago, God spoke to my heart. He told me "No, Joyce. You can't give it back to them. You have to forgive them. In other words, you have to give all of that stuff to ME -- I need you to forgive them. I will take all of that stuff, and then I will give it back to them. Vengenance is Mine; not so they will be harmed or await a certain hell, but I will give this load they put on you back to them. But you have to give it to Me first. Then they will have to give it back to Me and to receive the same freedom and forgiveness as you have. Let me take all of that for you. I'll handle it from there." What a revelation. It seems simple, but it was huge and complex and awesome and convicting all at once. Wow.
Fast forward to the Prayer Experiment. Not really thinking about this, but trying to just have an open mind and heart, I walked into the rock room. I picked up a BIG rock ... I couldn't believe how long I had to hold on to it and how very heavy it became so quickly. I couldn't wait to be able to unload it.
And then it clicked. God was waiting to take that very
load away from me. I gave it to Him in the illustration of dropping it in that pond. The water was so murky (or appeared to be) that I couldn't even see it after I dropped it in there. It was gone!
When I walked into the bowl room, I sat and prayed and listened -- and wept. I sat there for a very long time, just sitting in His presence, waiting until I was ready to take the next step. Now that I had agreed to give that burden to Him, it was time to really let Him keep it. Forgiving those guys seemed the logical thing to write down, and I did. But then I continued to write -- about forgiving myself. I forgive you, Joyce, for being afraid. I forgive you, Joyce, for being jealous. I forgive you, Joyce, for being insecure. I forgive you, Joyce, for not trusting God's promises. I forgive you, Joyce, I forgive you, Joyce. The list went on and on. Finally, I finished writing and dropped my paper into the bowl. As I watched and saw my words begin to fade, the paper began to tear, from top to bottom, slowly but completely. It was to me exactly how I envisioned the veil was torn in the Holy of Holies when Jesus offered His forgiveness on the Cross and it was finished -- exactly. It was as though God was showing me just how my unforgiveness separates me from being in the full glory of His presence and He was reminding me by this beautiful vision right in front of my eyes. Jesus' forgiveness tore that veil that sheilded my eyes from focusing completely and fully on Him. He did that for me! Me!
I was so excited that the next room was a place to just
write down my praise and awe and joy and marvel about Who God is and about how much I love Him -- and how much He loves me! I mean, I know all of this and have known Jesus for decades but this was so fresh and so huge and so new to me -- a new freedom and a new place where I've finally allowed His light to shine, into the deepest, darkest places of my shame. There is light there now! I feel so bouyant, as though I had been walking with shoes made of cement for so many years and now I have on ballet slippers that allow me to dance in a way that I wouldn't have dared to have hoped I could have.
And now my prayer is just to have more opportunities to
reflect His beautiful light to others.
Amazing. God is simply ... amazing.
Thirteen Paradigm Shifts we encountered doing Christian ministry in a pagan environment
by Donald Miller
1. Other People Exist:Simply coming to the understanding that the world does not revolve around “me” but that everybody is having an experience, created by God, loved by God, and that we needed to repent of showing partiality.
2. Nobody will listen to you unless they know you like them:We began to understand that people, subconsciously, merit a
religious or philosophical idea not on logical conclusions, but on whether or not the idea creates a “good person”…the definition of a good person being whether or not a person is kind to them, tolerant and understanding, able to listen without arguing and so on.
3. Nobody will listen to God unless they know God loves them:We came to believe there was usually a hidden pain behind
hostility, that many people have been hurt by the church, or people or perspectives they believed to represent God. Many times it's as simple as an interview they saw on CNN, but an apology and kindness went a long way in helping people understand God was loving.
4. Other people have morality and values:We came to understand that Christians do not own morality, that everybody lives by a moral code, not always informed by an ancient text, and yet it is there. Calling people or even thinking of them as immoral was, then, inappropriate. In fact, we often found that people who did not know Christ lived a morality close to his heart in many areas we had ignored, ie; community, tolerance, social justice, fairness and equality, freedom, beauty and so on.
5. Find common ground:Often the morality of others overlapped Christian morality, and we came to understand that in these cases, we would focus on the overlapping issues. We came to see this as kindness, just as though we were on a date or making friends, we did not focus on what we didn’t have in common, but rather on mutual feelings about life. We would not say or do anything to combat people unless they knew we loved them, and this takes a great deal of time.
6. Define terms in their language:We were careful about Christian sayings and phrases that might be offensive: Crusade, sin, immorality….we came to understand that concepts were more sacred than terms.
7. Telling somebody about the gospel is about them, not us:We were careful not to try to “build our organization” and respected peoples freedom and space. Sharing the gospel became an exercise in friendship, rather than an attempt to grow a machine. Often, people feel used if they feel they are being recruited. The gospel, we learned, is really about them, their feelings about God and truth, about sin, about life.
8. Don’t let spreading the gospel feel any different than telling
somebody about a love in your life, about your children or a great
memory:We realized that in telling somebody about Jesus, we were telling them about somebody we have come to love and need, and about something that had happened to us, an encounter. This keeps us from sounding preachy, and allows us to share part of ourselves in a friendship.
9. Include lost People in Your Community:Our organization was not exclusive. We invited non-believers into the community if they wanted to be invited. We were careful not to not be ourselves with them, but they were certainly invited and enjoyed being a part of the group. We explained terms that we used, what we believed, but other than that, continued as normal.
10. Apologize for what you represent:We discovered that many people have been offended or hurt by what they perceive Christianity to be. We allowed ourselves to stand in the place of “Christianity” and apologize whenever necessary.
11. Be authentic:We discovered the need to be as honest about our lives as possible. We did not feel the need to sell Jesus, as much as share what He has done in our broken lives. We had no problem sharing our doubts and fears about faith, along with our commitment and appreciation for what God had done.
12. Pray for the Salvation of others:We discovered the need to pray for others. This would insure God was working in peoples lives, as we asked Him to. We discovered the work of evangelism is something God lets us watch, but very little of it is what we manipulate. We repented of not believing evangelism was a spiritual exchange between a lost person and God, rather than believing it was a series of ideas we were supposed to convince others of.
13. Ask people if they would like to know Christ:We decided to initiate, whenever the relationship called for it. We were not afraid to ask people if they would like to know God.
Ah but the stability that comes from staying in place, being truly
grounded, settled, unwilling to jump when the next parade comes to town beating
whatever "drum of the month" it brings... that only comes from trusting, seeking
and recognizing the presence of God in normal, everyday tasks. The same
neighbors, the same place of work, same basic situation cannot shut God out. We
simply don't have the power to stop the active Spirit when and where He chooses
to work!
Thanks, Glenn.
Quote by my friend Glenn:
