Forgiveness and Offense

Forgiveness and Offenses

The Sunday Sermon I heard on Forgiveness  dealt  very effectively with that subject  as it addressed the instruction given us in what we commonly call The Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors (those that trespass against us)") It also addressed the Matthew 6 prayer calling forth the will of God on earth as it is in Heaven.  The sermon also dealt with how that   heavenly Kingdom with its operating principles was further illustrated in Matthew 18 in the parable of the King who wished to settle his accounts and which concluded, “So also my heavenly Father will deal with every one of you if you do not freely forgive your brother from your heart his offenses.” (AMP)

A couple years ago another aspect of the ways of the Kingdom of God was introduced to me by a pastor friend who shared that he’d required all his elders to read a book he was recommending to me: Unoffendable by Brant Hansen. I had previously shared two articles with this pastor by Frances Frangipane on the way of being unoffendable so I was very open to following this friend’s recommendation to purchase the book. It has opened my eyes to the root causes of our offenses and the reasons we need to forgive people…not just because we are “ordered by the Word of God” to do it, but because we come to realize we too have offended and need forgiveness.

This book was shared in a bible study that I attended and the teacher told the group how it had opened her eyes to seeing that she'd made choices in the past based on her own offenses. Presently another group of women I fellowship with have started reading this book and already some have shared how it is opening their eyes to new areas of freedom in relationships.

So am I just here recommending Brant's book or Frangipanes’ 2 articles? No…but I encourage you if Holy Spirit is stirring you as you read this to seek them out. But most of all I encourage you to seek the Lord and His ways as it relates to the condition of your heart. 

We have much to learn as we walk as Kings Kids, as children of the Kingdom of God, learning how to address issues that previously offended us. Does the immorality of the world and its participants offend you? Do the participants in the political process of this nation call forth rebukes silently or openly? Do  you find that various people deserve to have various “names” attached to your reference to them? What kind of things do you say about the guy that cuts in front of you on the freeway or who gives you the finger at an intersection or honks when you don’t move through a signal fast enough?

Recently I put this quote in my Unoffendable book, a quote from the late John Paul Jackson.  "There’s no offense without a stronghold and the amount of emotion tells the strength of the stronghold.”  2 Corinthians  10 tells us we’re to be casting down strongholds, thoughts that exalt themselves before the throne of God. That refers to thoughts that come from a way of thinking in our lives that is contrary to the Truth of who God is and Who He is in us, to us and in and to others.

The strength of our response to situations we dislike and which we have judged to be wrong and which justify our judgment and condemnation determines how deep an offense is rooted in our lives. This requires Holy Spirit to work His loving searchlight of love into our deceitful unrepairable hearts. It requires us to be trusting His love to show us His heart and our choice to let it be His heart where our roots sink into or will it be  into our own reason and logic and other aspects of our humanity? We are free to allow Holy Spirit to do this work because there is now no condemnation for those who walk in the Spirit of His great love.  (Roman 8:1) That Love paid the price for all our trespasses/sins/iniquities AND everyone else’s…ouch!

May we come to awareness of our own offenses so that we can truly be forgiven and release that forgiveness to others. For this is the choice given to us as those in the Kingdom knowing as scripture says…if you forgive the sins of anyone they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of anyone, they are retained.”

Meri Ford

merifordrh@gmail.com

All references to Brant Hansen’s UNOFFENDABLE: HOW JUST ONE CHANGE CAN MAKE ALL OF LIFE BETTER  ISBN978-0-529-12385-5  by W Publishing Group..Brant's website

https://branthansen.com/2015/05/11/now-that-unoffendable-is-out-5-things-im-learning/

Two articles on Unoffendable  by Frances Frangipane for further study

Part 1

https://francisfrangipanemessages.blogspot.com/2016/06/unoffendable.html

Part 2

https://francisfrangipanemessages.blogspot.com/2013/07/unoffendable-part-2.html

Meri’s Sunday Musings

March 11, 2018

Tonight I searched through my small bookcase looking for a book by AW Tozer but didn’t find it. Instead I picked up what appeared to be a well read small booklet by Norman Grubb called Touching the Invisible.  I clearly had read it at least once as it is well marked with various colored pens. Yet in some sense I was reading it afresh and found it to confirm thinking that I had been struggling with. Perhaps my base thinking was in some way formulated from an earlier reading of this, I do not know.

I have mentioned in previous emails that I have had a struggle with some hip and lower back issues for the last couple of years which have seemingly increased in their severity in the last six months.  It has been the commitment of my heart to trust the Lord, to trust that indeed I am seated with Him in heavenly places and that all spiritual blessings are mine IN HIM. It is the foundation of my trust in Him that He lives and moves and has His being IN me., and that as He is in this world so am I.

And I know that I live and move in Him who IS. And as the  IAM, He is my very personal provider, righteousness, healing, health and healer, my Peace, my Hope, sanctification and sanctifier ,and just everything!! 

His word is true and I know that Holy Spirit delivers everything that Jesus is into my life and teaches and equips me to live in Him. And I trust that process.

I have had several times when the Lord’s hand has been felt on my back and I was “unaware” of my back, meaning there was no pain, for a couple of days. And then there would be awareness once again that there were actions that I couldn’t do without suffering consequences. It has not altered my trust in WHO HE IS IN ME.

This morning as I traveled the 20 miles to services, Holy Spirit spoke to my heart once again , Meri I want you to just rest in me during the service.  I want you to just rest in assurance you are in me and I in you…and you are indeed seated with me in heavenly places.

OK Lord….and as the praise and worship time progressed I kept hearing the words from the singing…”waiting for God”….and the song they sang was about “waiting for God.”   And then there was talk of “needing a touch from God.”  And I recoiled in my Spirit and wondered why are we “waiting for God to do something?”  Does He not promise that as we wait upon Him…serve Him with our praises because of WHO HE IS, that He will in his choice of time do all that His Word has said that He will do?

My heart was at rest and it was like I was hearing once again…Meri, it’s about habitation not visitation.

OK,…that’s been the mantra so to speak that I’ve been dealing with and  that’s being worked in me recently.  I was glad he had said REST, because I felt oddly out of whack with the cries of the folks around me…which isn’t so strange for this prophetic personality!  But I also know I can “miss it good.”

So it was with such a sense of blessing and even surprise, that I open up Grubb tonight and read on page 13:

If we trace our weakness in the exercise of authoritative faith to the source, we shall find that our spiritual vitality is sapped at the roots ˆthrough failure to take a bold grasps of the truth of ‘Christ in you’,  sufficient to shatter the illusion and consequent weakening effect of a false sense of separation.   We know God only at a distance.  We know “touches of His power and grace, visitations which come and go.”  We are sure about the past through trust in His atoning work and the future through the promise of eternal life. But we have only a variable consciousness of His daily presence with us.

The transforming truth is that of our inward fusion with Him.    He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.”

I remember many times  when there is talk of sickness and need for healing, that the offer from the altar was..”DO YOU NEED A TOUCH FROM THE LORD?”  I heard this last Sunday and my inner man cried out…”I want more than  a TOUCH, I want to know you intimately as My healer and My health and My healing…for that is Who you are and as You are in the world so am I.”  

We are as a church across America being taught this is no longer the time for visitation…but of habitation…it isn’t the time to go to services and “get”, but it is a time to go to services as the “church” and allow God in us to move through us out into the world about us.  Yet I realize for many who have been in the pew for more years than I have and that is increasingly fewer a the years go by, their focus is about going to “church” to get…to be refueled, to get healed, to get encouraged.

This morning the sermon was on the 10 virgins….and as it was presented I kept thinking even as I reflect on it now…were those 5 that didn’t have sufficient oil in their lamps and no extra supply…were they ones that were dependent on getting it from someone, were they not intimately acquainted with the Lamp and the Oil …Word and the Spirit themselves?  The scriptures says that is true for the man keeping the door said I DON’t HAVE INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF YOU”

As was preached, today we do need to be prepared….for it is almost the midnight hour and Jesus IS coming SOON…but do I have to go to the “church service” three times a week to be obedient to the scripture to not forsake the gathering together as some will in the last days to make sure my lamp doesn’t go out and I have an supply that won’t run out?   In years past I learned that in some Pentecostal circles, much to my surprise coming from the background I did as a pastor’s kid,  that I was told I was unfaithful to the Lord because I didn’t attend Sunday night services and Wednesday night and any other thing held at the church.  I wondered if I wasn’t hearing something similar this morning.  

Are we to be “wherever the Holy Spirit is moving”  in a community or are we to be obedient to what the Holy Spirit is speaking to our hearts as He reveals Jesus to us?

If our walk is about Christ in me the hope of glory, then learning to listen to Him and to follow the teaching and instruction of Holy Spirit in my spirit is the essential aspect of obedience.   Some years ago when there was another move of God within a 100 mile radius, I found myself wanting to go to this meeting and that.  And at the time the Holy Spirit spoke to me and reminded me of the scripture…which I heard as “don’t run after the Anointing”…..for they will say Christ is here, or Christ (the Anointing) is there…..but the reality is Christ, the Anointing is IN YOU.”

God’s Presence was very present in the service this morning and I love the sense of His Presence. And I trust He moved and worked on some hearts.. But how sad it is if we are dependent upon being in a building at a given time during the week to have God work on our hearts. What if we let him work all week and equip us so that when we gathered together we could allow Him to be “poured out” in our midst…we could allow Him to do what He says He will do when we are together in Unity…one in His Spirit? Does that mean we all are “waiting for Him to do something”….or does it mean we are so trusting Him, that when Christ in me and Christ in You and Christ in someone else all gather together and release the power that is Christ, that HE can do something he can’t do otherwise?  

I believe God wants to “blast this entire county” through the congregation where I gather on some regular basis. But for now it seems they are busy waiting for God to touch them, and rejoicing in the touches of God despite the teaching they are getting on habitation. But that habitation teaching is that God wants to dwell in the HOUSE…and He definitely is choosing to share his Presence in that place more often than in other congregations I’ve been in because he is welcome there. But what does He want to do?????   He wants a people that He is in relationship with through whom he can speak to this whole county and state….as they speak the gospel TO THE PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS over this region according to Ephesians.

Long ago I listened to a service out of Scottsdale Arizona, and it was different from most radio broadcasts because of what took place during those services. They allowed GOD to do something and He was dealing with breaking down forces that held other areas in bondage…so that other areas could be set free…so souls could be set free to come into the “house of the Lord.”  

The time is very short and things are surely going to accelerate in this hour as has been proclaimed by the prophets and others in the last few years with the death of Billy Graham.  I heard of yet another who had a dream several years ago totally independent of the ones that have been shared…and said again that things would accelerate towards the culmination of this age unlike what we have seen  after Billy Graham died.  This from a very close trusted friend of mine. And of course many prophetic voices have it on record as God saying similar things to them in the past few years.

So how are we to be prepared?  God wants a people to call Sons..he wants His inheritance in the earth…Jesus’ inheritance….SONS>>>>>habitation means Holy Spirit is working in us to make us or conform us to His Image, so that when we see Him He recognizes HIMSELF In us….our inner being having been opened to His gaze and the penetration of Holy Spirit, to change us through repentance and change of mindset to behaviors emanating from the mind and heart of the Lord himself., thanks to our being a “new creation and the old passing away.” He wants Sons that can rule on the earth and who have been trained while in this mortal body to yield to Him and allow Him to change us, work in us and through us to accomplish that work necessary for Jesus Christ to  gather the saints unto himself and rule and reign with them upon the earth.

How blessed are we to know Him, to know He dwells within us, to Know Holy Spirit is forever present to teach us his ways and equip us to walk in His paths!!!

Bless the name of Jesus.

What testimony do we give?

In recent weeks I find many of the things that I have thought about and looked at in the past seem to be changing rapidly as “new” ways of looking and thinking come across my path. Sometimes it means looking at something with hindsight and seeing it through new a new mindset.

Recently we watched the movie The Nun’s Story with Audry Hepburn. It was not the first time I watched it and at least I knew that much! Other aspects of the movie were seen fresh through the lens of my current thinking. In the movie, the young girl who worked as a lab technician/RN for her father, who was a well known doctor, decides to go into the convent. She’s a very independent thinker who has been a successful nurse and lab technician and longs to serve on the “foreign field” where people so desperately need medical help. Throughout the story she is determined to do what is asked of her at the convent and in other places, to make the sacrifices of obedience to routine and ritual that are expected of her. As she goes out to do nursing in a Catholic compound in the field where there are many casualties of WWII that are now accumulating, she finds that being interrupted treating a sick patient by the “bell” that says it is time for Mass is very frustrating. Similarly many other “rules” don’t allow her to really care about the people in her life but put her in some kind of artificial status which she understands might be fitting for those in the convent but not for those working out in the public in the midst of human need. Over and over she works to “conform” and ultimately finds that she is always “making mistakes” according to the catholic “rules.” The harder she works to conform to those standards the more she realizes she can’t and that it inhibits her from truly loving and caring for people. Eventually she decides she just can’t live up to the standards and expectations of being a nun and leaves the order...end of story.

My heart ached throughout the movie, seeing such a travesty of the truth of Jesus Christ portrayed in a “christian religious setting.” There was no “rest” in Christ. There was no “identity” in Christ to be received. It was conform and perform to be acceptable and if you didn’t you went to confession and did penance. And the end...hopelessness and alienation.

This story isn’t so much different from the story of a Hindu man who was well motivated to excel and was a high caste person in India who would become Brahman. No matter how hard he tried, he could find no solution to the ongoing problem of “not being able to be perfect.” The Hindu teaching only encouraged him to work harder but offered no solution to his “sin problem” any more than the Nun’s Story offered any solution (salvation) from her inability to not make mistakes and not be perfect.

The Hindu man heard some Untouchables one day singing about Salvation from sin, and it stirred his heart as he had no way to get rid of his sins. His Hindu gods offered no salvation from sin and failures. Just more punishment. Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses and all other psuedochristian practices offer no more hope than the Hindu man had or the nun.

Yet, how often do we who call ourselves Christian also fail to realize and I do that I can’t do anything with my sin nature.. But there is something He did with it when The Lord Jesus died once for all for all sin and all sinners. And the exciting thing this: it is a reality whether we receive it or believe it. Jesus paid the price for our fallen human nature and through his resurrection, released the Holy Spirit to put His Spirit in us, restoring us to the status we had in Christ, in God before the fall of man often referred to as the foundation of the world. It is there in all that such a relationship offers just waiting for me to “see” and be a part. What good news!!!

In a conversation just this morning, a friend and I were discussing the way many of us thought about these things in the past. Lord, here I am, please use me!! And we do want Him to use us to share the gospel. But my friend and I realized together that this is not God’s plan. God is the ultimate authority. He is in control of everything! What He has invited us into when we received His Holy Spirit to indwell my human spirit is to have a relationship with him...not “be used by him!” He uses ALL THINGS because he is GOD.

I was a little hard headed and self-driven thinking being used of God was the ultimate, Some of this has radically changed during this last election cycle as never before I have come to see the error of that thinking seeing how my God is in charge of ALL! He is the authority over ALL. NOTHING happens outside His plan and purpose or else he isn’t God Almighty. When we were invited to be “in Christ” and “Christ in me” I was as the scripture speaks of it, now in a position to “co-labor” with Christ. It isn’t about being used...it’s about being a part of what HE IS doing. That is part of the reason we have been invited to be in relationship with Him. To participate by His Spirit in the works which Christ is doing here on the earth. Those works were laid out before the foundation of the earth for us to walk in.

Oh how this changes the mind set. First of all it means I can’t just say, Here I am Lord, use me. Because he was already using me to accomplish whatever He was purposing. Whether I was a co-laborer with him or not is another matter. He wants me to participate in what He is doing...not Him “using me” because I bear His name..........which He of course is doing whether I bear his name or not! But unless I am in relationship with him and know at least by faith what He is doing, am I not out doing “my own thing” to please the Almighty God. Don’t I miss all the “benefits” as King David once wrote...all the benefits of being a child of the King who is at work..peace, joy, power, courage? Co-laboring means that as I am in relationship with the Lord, open to his voice, a student of his word and in conversation with Him, I find out what He is doing and in obedience walk in those footsteps.

Throughout the recent election season I sought to rest in the Lord and sought, as I still do, to come to some measure of understanding of what He is doing and desiring to accomplish and what my part is. In increasing measure, I find my part is to rejoice and be thankful and offer up the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for all He is and all He is doing whether I actually see it clearly or not. Secondly when He does show me what his heart is caring about to participate in what He is doing by speaking forth His word that he’s quickened into the situation, sometime in person, sometimes in what I could call prayer, but from heaven into earth. If I am seated with Him in heavenly places I will be his hands and tools to carry out the love that he is showing and has shown throughout eternity.

For most of my adult life my walk with God was more about “doing what I thought was right” than listening to Him to see what He was doing and being identified “in Him.” Loving people was usually stratified on a scale of “how to love best” rather than seeking the Father’s heart and seeing what He is doing and realizing He aligned me with Him and that I can speak that alignment into the circumstances of my life knowing what He has already done and accomplished at the cross and in the resurrection. What a relief it is...what rest!

At the end of the Nun’s story I could only think of how the Israelites failed to enter into the Rest that He had planned for them since they sought conformity to the law rather than seeing the law as the means by which we are convicted of our total need for His grace...the impartation of his power in us and through us.

The Hindu convert came into the knowledge of the Kingdom of God seeing that there was no ability in mankind to be saved from his own nature’s inability to be perfect and no way to cleanse himself of his “sins and trespasses.” We easily say, There is Salvation in none other” but we fail to realize that statement is only true “in Christ.” My freedom comes as I am found “in Christ and Christ functions in and through me.” And this free to all who would receive such a gift, bought and paid for by the blood of the Lamb.

Kingdom of God.........I used to throw that term around as if I knew what it meant!! Until we really have some grasp of the King and our relationship to the King which comes as Christ is in me, we won’t know what it means to have a Father that is the King of Kings...or a Saviour that has already conquered death, hell, and the grave and that I am invited to participate in the fulfillment of the plan of God of the ages, NOW.

How could I live for some many years and not know these things? Because my eyes weren’t open and I was so busy trying to be a Christian and do what we Christians are supposed to do, I missed who I was and who He is in me.

In recent days I’ve been freed to consider some things from the past in light of the present “mindset” regarding the Kingdom of God. And as a result, I have gotten a fuller awareness of His grace and mercy in days past. For many years I lived in a state of trauma first with a husband who was a peeping tom and then a husband who was an alcoholic. Reading recently that it takes two years for the human brain to “reorganize” after a period of trauma, I can look back and easily say, I did really crazy things during those years and also in the ensuring couple of years realizing I was thinking with a brain still not functioning healthily from trauma. I have been healed and I can’t attribute disorganized thinking today to previous trauma in my life. But what it has afforded me, is the ability to understand those in my world who are in the midst of trauma and who aren’t thinking straight. And what I can see is that God isn’t focused on their screw ups. He doesn’t hold them to the standard of “right thinking.” Instead just as he was with me, he is walking with and working in those caught up in the web of trauma and as I co-labor with him I can see now how he is dealing with them, just like he did in my “crazy” days.

I used to say through various traumatic episodes that I “came through” but that it wasn’t by my faith. And as never before today as I watch dear friends going through traumatic things., it is clear that it is the Body that is upholding them as they continue to make poor decisions, sometimes worsening their trauma. But HE is still in control. When our friends aren’t thinking good enough to allow us to even be of any “assistance” to them, I can now see how my Father is patient with them,, covering them, working on their behalf even when they are half crazy!! And my testimony is often the only hope of them ever getting a glimpse, if indeed the Lord allows them to hear. For in my testimony of God’s faithfulness in my crazy times and telling of some of my goofed up thinking come the assurance that HIS hand still working in me because of who He is.. Our testimony or our “story” often allows us the power to touch another life without bumping into their crazy thinking because we aren’t talking about them, but about God’s faithfulness to me and everyone else that doesn’t change.

In closing......when I read a majority of “political” posts by Christians in this day, I see very few who are speaking forth the Life that is in them. Anyone can pick out what is wrong. Anyone can look at me and pick out something wrong and I can do that with others also. But it takes being conformed to the heart of the Father and having my mind being renewed in its spirit to the mind of Christ to be able to speak forth that God IS in the middle of any set of circumstances. And learning of Him to have wisdom and understanding takes time before Him and with Him as we live in Him.

And they overcame by the word of their testimony, the blood of the lamb and they loved not their lives unto death.

What testimony do we have when we post on face book or write in blogs or share when we visit over a cup of coffee? Anything we share though it be from “another source” or news article...is some kind of a testimony...what will it be?

Meri Ford