Let It Go. Let It Go.

We need to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  It is a sin to hold onto grudges. There I have said it.  It is a sin to hold onto grudges.   

I can hear the replies of people who would argue.   "Wait a second! You don't know what they did!"  "I have forgiven, but I will never forget!" "I have to make sure that they can never hurt me again!" "I have to make sure they will never hurt someone else again!"  All these responses, I am sure, are seen as legit by the ones who make them.  Deep hurt breeds harsh responses.  Any of these responses can make a lot of sense, except...

I once was told, "Hurt people hurt people, but healed people heal people." By holding onto a grudge, do you find yourself on the healed side of the spectrum, or on the hurt? By holding onto a grudge, are you committing yourself to healing others around you, or are you hurting them?   It doesn't matter if you don't intend to.  Does it really matter what your intentions are in holding the grudge if the result of pain?  Shouldn't we focus more heavily on the result, not the reason behind why we see our actions as justified?

It's 10x worse when this behavior comes from the church. The church is a people who have acknowledged that Jesus Christ paid for their sins with his own blood. We believe that none of us deserved forgiveness, but because of sin deserved only death.  

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23.

We are thus the recipients of forgiveness and grace, loved by God who has chosen to not hold our previous actions against us but to consider them eradicated by Jesus blood.  God, who has every right, and who has all the power to do so, has decided not to hold a grudge for the multitude of failures we commit and for the weakness of humanity.

He tells us then to pay it forward...

So how dare we hold a grudge?

Is God able to transform a life from wicked and destructive to Godly and righteous?   Is God able to take a failing action or attitude and make the person who did it more like Jesus?   

We better hope so, or each and every one of us is 'screwed'.

What should the response of the church be when one who has done them great harm is repentant, and is changed by the power of God?   Today's verse that gave me pause is key:

"They only heard the report: "The man who formally persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.  And they praised god because of me."  Gal 1:23-24

Paul was an oppressor, torturer and murderer.   He was zealous about doing it.   Because of his actions, peoples whole lives had been impacted.  Many had seen their family affected.  Many had lost status and a way of life.  They did nothing more than love Jesus in a world that was against His message. Paul made them pay for that.

Yet these same people, according to the text, saw that Paul was changed by Jesus Christ.  He still as not perfect.  He still had weakness and flaws, YET the church didn't keep him at bay.   They didn't remind him of all the things he had done.   The Bible says, "They praised God because of me."   They forgave as God forgave Paul.  They forgave as God forgave them.   

They did exactly what they were supposed to do - they let it go, and together they moved on.

The average American church is about 100 people.  When you consider how many churches are in the hundreds and thousands, it concerns me that this number is skewed, and is not really good. This number means that a greater majority of churches today are not growing, not making an impact and not effective. 

Could the reason be that while we teach about Jesus, we don't follow His example?   Could we be more inclined to operate out of human thinking and response than to get the heart of God and live in it?  Could sin (like grudge holding) be keeping our effectiveness away because we are constantly injecting the poison of unforgiveness?

I pray that the church will clean house - and will live Biblically, pushing back on her pattern of human logic.  May the church (people) let go past grudges and approach each person with a blank slate gained through true forgiveness; modeled after the pattern of Jesus, not a statement of apology.  May we remember that we are called to let it go, as other and as God has done for us.