I was raised Christian. Then I was raised in the Torah movement. Then I got married and kind of did a hybrid of both, then I did neither, then I got smacked in the face and knocked to my knees by circumstance and finally got my act together and turned my life over to Yeshua.
Why did I yo-yo so much? Any preacher's kid can tell you the answer to that; being raised in a faith doesn't actually make it your faith. All the VeggieTales, Adventures in Oddessy, and Call of the Martyrs in the world cannot force someone to unplug their ears and hear the Holy Spirit. It has to be a personal journey, and a choice. Some kids who are raised in it make that choice young, know the truth, and stick with it their whole lives. Others are raised in it and run away the first chance they get. And some, like me, are stubborn and have to see the world for themselves before they can understand just what Salvation truly means.
Because of this, I have discovered that the central theme of scripture seems to all be one and the same; Love and Forgiveness. Because of those two things, we also have to understand Hate and Justice. As cliche as it sounds, you really can't have one without the other, and God is capable of all at once. He hates sin, and loves obedience. He demands justice, and can give forgiveness. When we throw out the Church dogma and can just read the Bible for what it is, we can see a consistent theme over and over of our Father saying "I love you, and want you to obey Me so things will go well with you." And then us, His children saying "Yeah but that sounds hard/not fun/not what would make me happy soooo no thanks."
This grieves our Father! Not because He hates us or fun or good things, but because He loves us and wants things to go well with us! He said as much to His friend, Moses:
Oh, how I wish their hearts would stay like this always, that they would fear me and obey all my mitzvot; so that it would go well with them and their children forever. -Deuteronomy 5:29
These are words directly from our Father Himself! He longs that our hearts would always be as serious about His laws as Israel's was that day at the foot of the mountain. He wants things to go well with us and our children. But alas, He knows our hearts better than we know ourselves, and He knew even back at the beginning what would happen.
Adonai said to Samuel, “Listen to the people, to everything they say to you; for it is not you they are rejecting; they are rejecting me; they don’t want me to be king over them. They are doing to you exactly what they have been doing to me, from the day I brought them out of Egypt until today, by abandoning me and serving other gods. So do what they say, but give them a sober warning, telling them what kinds of rulings their king will make.”-1 Samuel 8:7-9
He said so to Samuel; look at how His people had been turning their backs on him since Egypt; really since the Garden of Eden. And still, to this day, regardless of the blessings we are given, we so often turn our backs on our King. The books of the Prophets are replete with the sorrow and pining God has had for us, His people. But sorrow became righteous anger, because without us turning from our sins, we could not be forgiven, we could not come to our Father, and we repeatedly humiliated ourselves by turning our backs on our God. God promised us good if we obeyed Him; and because of His nature, promised to punish us (disciple us out of our sin) if we disobeyed.
But mingled in with the sorrow and anger of the Prophets is a shining thread of redemption and Forgiveness. Because even before we knew we were broken, even before we knew our Death was a certainty, God was opening a door to Salvation. Among the warnings and fury of Justice poured on His people through His servants, the Prophets, was a whisper of the future; of Salvation, of Forgiveness.
This, of course, is Yeshua the Messiah (commonly called Jesus Christ). The only truly perfect person to ever walk this earth, Yeshua was the pure and clean sacrifice needed to finally cleanse Israel, and the world, of her sins. Until we were clean, our Father couldn't open His arms to us, to allow us into the perfection of His kingdom. Our sin would have marred it, but we were incapable of cleansing ourselves. No, we were born into sin, born of sin, as our first human father and mother sealed our fate with a bite of forbidden fruit. So in spite of our best efforts, we are unclean, and cannot come into the Sanctuary where our God sits.
(Note: Unclean does not actually equal sin. It is not a sin to be unclean, only a sin to do certain things while unclean, one of them being approach the Holy of Holies. But that's a topic for another day.)
Most likely, you already know all this. This is that cliche part; Jesus died for your sins so you can go to Heaven. Your works are imperfect. Blah blah blah.
We've heard it a million times. In Western culture, the Gospel, the Good News, has become a cliche. It's become commonplace. So much that we don't even comprehend it anymore. We do not comprehend the magnitude of sin, our separation from God, or the sacrifice that was made so we can have forgiveness. It's become a throw away phrase. Some people even use forgiveness as an excuse to live in sin.
Beware the Leaven
Now that I've laid the ground work for this idea of forgiveness, let me tell you why. Every year, when Passover is near, I remember when Yeshua said "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees" and went on to explain how it wasn't actual yeast he was talking about, but the pride and hypocrisy that puffed them up. It made them fat, bloated, and sinful. Passover has become basically a time of reflection for me. As I clean the yeast from my house in preparation for the Feast of Unleavened Bread every year, I also start praying and examining myself, wondering what Leaven is in my heart this year.
(Note: Yes, I keep the Feast Days. the Bible commands it. Yet another topic for another day.)
In years past it has been many physical things; movies I shouldn't be watching, idols I had in my home without realizing it, drinking in excess, the clothes I wore, etc. Those, while sometimes difficult to let go of, are oftentimes easier to deal with than when the Holy Spirit sets His sights on something in your heart. Something you thought you were doing good at.
This year, I had two things come at me at once; talking too much (which included gossiping and nagging my husband) and an unforgiving spirit. I've spoken a bit on the talking too much thing over on my Instagram in a highlight called Talk2Much. I was going to make another Instagram post, but there was just no way to say what I meant on such a limited platform.
I think the two things are linked together. Oftentimes, I talk out of anger. It leads to gossip, but the root is an unforgiving spirit. If I forgave someone, what would I have to say against them in gossip?
This came about in a few ways. In the spirit of not gossiping, I will be keeping some things private.
Many years ago, I was blind with rage and sadness. It led me to sin, because at the time, I was up to my neck in the deceptively sweet platitudes of New Ageism, pretending it fit in with the Bible, but truthfully hiding from the sometimes painful growth that Believing in Scripture creates.
I became what we like to call Toxic to my husband. I mean this in a very sincere way; I was that person that a reddit forum would probably tell you to leave in the dust. I was self centered and lost. My marriage, by all rights, was in shambles and it was very heavily my own selfishness that caused it. Most men would have left; would have called it quits and even I wouldn't have blamed them.
For some reason, perhaps the nudging of the Holy Spirit, my husband chose to forgive my Toxic behavior, even before I had gotten to the root of it myself. He wasn't exactly overlooking it; he was mad at me (understandably) and hurt by my attitudes often. But he continued to stick by my side.
One year rolled into the next, and when I became pregnant with our second child, God really brought me to my knees in a big way. There was no lightening bolt moment, but over the course of that pregnancy, I began to seek God with my whole heart. It was during this time I learned one of my now favorite passages in scripture.
For I know what plans I have in mind for you,’ says Adonai,‘plans for well-being, not for bad things; so that you can have hope and a future. When you call to me and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you seek me, you will find me, provided you seek for me wholeheartedly; and I will let you find me,’ says Adonai. ‘Then I will reverse your exile. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have driven you,’ says Adonai, ‘and bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.’-Jeremiah 29:11-14
I felt fairly exiled; and I felt very deserving of such a punishment. What truly stood out the most to me, however, was the part where God says that if we seek Him wholeheartedly He will be there waiting. I wanted Him wholeheartedly; and thus I began to understand something. Being forgiven required me to seek him with my entire heart. I couldn't come to Him with a bad attitude and demand to be forgiven from sins I planned to commit later. I had to come with my brokenness and put it all at His feet. I needed Yeshua's gory, bloody, youthful death (do you ever just stop and think about how young he was?? I know He is also older than time but his earthly body was barely older than my husband!) in order to approach the throne of God, lay my sins and brokenness at His feet, and ask that it be washed away.
The most insane thing is that it's really that simple though. I can lay my sins down, ask to be set free, walk into His redemption and He just accepts me. Why? Because this was His plan for us all along!
I experienced forgiveness in a very real, very powerful way. Not just knowing I was forgiven in the abstract by God, but seeing it play out in real time by my husband. I thought often of The Hiding Place by Corrie TenBoom, and the forgiveness both she and her sister Betsie offered the Nazis after they were placed into (and in some cases died in) concentration camps. I even thought about writing a book called Radical Love about forgiveness because I was just coasting on a high for a while.
But then my own ugly heart came out, and I saw with horror that I was not as forgiving to others as I expected to receive.
Ask and ye shall receive
One of the (not so) funny things I've noticed in recent years is that when I start getting too comfortable, I'll sigh and ask God "show me my weakness". But just like when you pray for patience and then suddenly have the most trying day of your life, quite often that halfhearted mumble of a prayer turns into some pruning and refining I wasn't prepared for.
Once again, I don't want to turn this into a gossip sesh so I will keep it brief. While I was pregnant with my 3rd baby, my husband and I found ourselves butting heads on a subject surrounding the birth. Oh the birth itself went off without a hitch; literal birds chirping, sun shining, perfect day, quick and dare I say easy birth, healthy baby and mama, dad sitting in the chair by the hospital bed glowing from pride. It was picturesque.
But under the surface, outside the bubble I made in the hospital, there as a storm brewing. I was hurt by a circumstance that was outside of my control. My hurt and my husband's hurt combined to make angry, miserable misers out of us both. I didn't want to talk about it, but eventually it came exploding out and I spent months stewing in my own anger. When the issue was finally talked about, my husband apologized for his part in the situation. I halfheartedly mumbled something akin to "yeah I forgive you", and we pretended to move on.
Only I hadn't. I was still angry. Months later, every time I thought of it, anger would rise in my chest. I let it seep into other parts of my relationship with my husband, until suddenly everything was slightly tainted. Not by the situation itself; but by my anger!
"Aren't I justified?" I would bemoan to myself, "Didn't this cut me deeply?" Oh sure, I knew he had forgiven me, and in name I would forgive him too, just to level the playing field, but I was still angry.
Then, one day we were talking and joking about how when I was a child, having only one sibling, we had to quickly make up after fights because who else was there to talk to? I jokingly mentioned that I didn't know if we ever truly apologized or if we just dismissed the anger to get back to playing because we had no other choice. My husband chuckled and said in his house, with 6 other siblings, you could gang up on each other, or just form alliances, so apologies didn't have to come to quickly.
But that got me to thinking; did I ever actually forgive my sister? All the times I was angry at her, many times justifiably so, did I ever actually forgive her, or did I just dismiss the situation and move on to get along with life? Did God dismiss our sin and move on, or did he actively seek a way to forgive us?
I've been holding onto anger towards my husband for so long, it was hard to see a way out. So one day, while folding his laundry, I looked up at the ceiling, still stewing in my anger and prayed "Lord, forgive him for me. Let me forgive him like you do."
I'd like to say it was a lightswitch moment, but it wasn't. All that day, I was quiet, thinking of my anger. Not of being angry, but my anger itself. God was angry at times. Yeshua was angry too. It's a normal thing to feel angry when something outside of your control hurts you. But what happened when Yeshua was angry? What was God angry at? Was it pittance outside their control? Was it a situation where they felt hurt and slighted?
It was the righteous anger at sin. The anger and disgust we should feel when someone hurts a child, or when an innocent bystander gets murdered. It's the anger we feel at injustice, at poverty starving a baby while a Hollywood star gets fat on illegal slave labor. There is righteous anger, and I have felt it before. It burns your chest and makes you cry out "Father, deliver us!"
My anger was very real, and it felt very raw. But the only person hurt in the situation was me. And the person who hurt me was someone I love very much, and who would never hurt me intentionally. I thought about Betsie TenBoom, who stood in a concentration camp, cold, starving, and covered in flea bites, who's weak arms were still cruelly commanded to work when her body was frail and failing, and who was abused by the very people who's heart she longed to save. Betise TenBoom was murdered at the hands of Nazi guards, but hours and days and weeks before her death, she was planning a home for them for after the war, so she could be the hands and feet of her beloved Savior and help them all heal from their own hurts.
I thought of Yeshua, who hung naked and in pain, struggling to breath, blood dripping from his hands and feet, and who still had enough compassion to find someone to care for His mother after His death. Who, mere hours earlier was denied by one of his best friends, but who would ultimately forgive Peter his unbelief and fear and still build His church on him. Who knew that Judas would betray Him, and yet still washed his feet when he was still with Him. I can guarantee if Judas had not killed himself, and had instead begged forgiveness at the foot of the cross, he would have received it. The self-same pharisees and Roman soldiers whose hands were covered in His blood could ask His forgiveness. And we know this, because the man who stood nearby, holding the coats and watching an innocent man put to death, who's hands were covered in the blood of other believers; this same man was offered a change at redemption, and gladly took it.
And somehow by the end of the day, I felt a weight lift that I didn't even know I was carrying. I asked Yeshua to forgive my husband, because I couldn't on my own. I asked Him to show me how, because I didn't know what to do. And that night, when I was ready for bed, I looked back over my shoulder, and realised the burden of an unforgiving spirit was gone. A burden I didn't even know I had until I asked that my Leaven be shown to me, and it was gone.
In the time since then, I have come to an important understanding; I do not deserve to be forgiven. None of us do. And yet, here I am, washed clean by the blood of my Messiah. I realized that Forgiveness is not the same as let bygones be bygones or water under the bridge. It's not the same thing as dismissively waving your hand and saying "oh it's fine". Because sin is never fine, it's never just water under the bridge, and someone, be it us or someone else, has to pay a price for the act of sinning. So to dismiss it like it's no big deal isn't actually Forgiving someone, it's ignoring it. If God had chosen to just ignore our sin, then it's no different than passively allowing or even approving. Forgiveness has weight, it has purpose, and it has power.
My leaven has been an unforgiving spirit for so long. For many years I thought I was just the chill person who didn't let stuff bother me, but deep down, it bothered me. When someone's actions against me were painful, I would often pretend it didn't hurt, but it did. Everyone carries around wounds from other's actions. That's part of life. But how often have I let a wound fester and infect me because I thought ignoring it was Forgiveness? No! Forgiveness is lancing the wound, it's cleaning it, it's bandaging it, and it's living with the scar. It's taking a deep breath, and blessing the person who stabbed you, even if they never apologize. I am blessed; my husband apologized, and I truly believe he means it. But if he didn't? Would it matter? Doesn't the prayer that Yeshua taught us remind us that we must forgive if we are to be forgiven ourselves?
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
I will never get an apology for some things in life. In some cases it's because the offending party doesn't even know what they did hurt me. Or they're not a Believer and I can't hold them to the same standard. Or something it was on purpose. But that's between them and God. As for me, I've discovered that the power of Forgiveness means I don't have to live with bygones or water under a million bridges. I can hand my unforgiving spirit over to Yeshua to wash it clean, I can ask Him to forgive where I am struggling to, and I can trust that in the end, His forgiveness is perfect and more than enough for me.
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