it's for giving

Last night as I was praying I was giving thanks and saying, “thanks for giving me…” and the “for giving” part suddenly jumped out at me.  For giving, forgiving, forgiveness.  God gives me (all of us) so much and he leads by example.  Although it is a very simple concept, I thought about the fact that forgiveness is for giving.  We are to forgive others freely, not carry it around just to give to family and friends.

Forgiveness gives back too.  When we truly forgive another we let go of the grudges and bitterness, it frees us to live abundantly. Remember how Satan invades our lives in those innocuous ways?  Well, one of those ways is to convince us that we need to hang on to grudges and bitterness; after all, we need to get revenge…right?  Wrong!  “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.”  Romans 12:19 How often do we rob ourselves of God’s blessing because we don’t leave room for him to work in us?  I told you before; Satan is sneaky.

God wants us to live abundantly, he desires to bless us and we keep standing in his way or directing him as to how he can bless us. I speak to myself as much as anyone reading this; let’s get out of God’s way and be blessed!




Posted by

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How are you?

Image
            When I wake, one of the first things I do is say, “Good morning God!” Some days are more enthusiastic than others. When I greet another human being, I usually follow that greeting with, “how are you?” This morning it occurred to me that I don’t ask God how he is. I have been contemplating this idea, how are you God? Obviously, given his attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience it is easy to follow the train of thought that he has everything in check. Despite that; I think of him in human terms and I can’t help but feel he is; not mad but disappointed (cringe). When he looks at creation, like a parent gazing on the wreckage of a kid’s toy room, wouldn’t there be disappointment?             As I contemplated that, my meandering mind led me to consider guilt. The guilt that leads to the disappointment of others. Every culture I have known lays claim to guilt; Lutheran guilt, Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, Italian guilt and so on. Truth be told, we’re all guil
Read more

Out of the Mouth

Image
  Genesis 3:14 “God said to Moses, ‘I AM who I AM.’ This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I Am has sent me to you.”             I feel the need to make a disclaimer statement up front as I can see what I will write in these next few sentences could be misconstrued. This writing is not claiming that man is God although I will say, that if you have claimed the Holy Spirit lives in you, that identifies that God is in you too.             How many times a day do you use the phrase “I am…”? Probably much more than you or I realize. This is how God identified Himself to Moses. “I AM who I AM” We often refer to God as the great I AM, which He is. Going back to how often we use the phrase, for myself those two words are often followed with denigrating words like; so stupid, so foolish, so dumb, so angry, so hurt, so fill in the blank. What if each time we thought about those two words and how we identify ourselves we replaced “I AM” with “God is” most of us (I make this assumptio
Read more

Masterpiece

Image
              As a young person, I was fond of painting, not great at it but reasonable. I set it aside when I fell in love and got married. In these days of isolation I needed to find some other ways to occupy myself other than baking and decided to get back to my paint brushes.   To get used to handling the brushes again I got myself a paint by number,             If you have never tried one of these let me give you a little insight. You receive a canvas with an image divided up into numbered areas and little pots of paint with corresponding numbers. Then you begin a sort of scavenger hunt trying to fill in all the spots of a particular number. Sounds simple enough, however some of these areas are so tiny they are easily overlooked. The tiny spots are important though, they give that little flourish that can draw the eye or round out an object.             Why do I tell you about this? As I dove into this project, a great life analogy was revealed to me and I do love a good word
Read more