Peace is the evidence of a life of forgiveness.
Gleanings from Readings Today
Humanity without humility makes true forgiveness impossible.
Humanity rises up and demands that I be declared the right one, the good one, the victimized one. But never has that made anything better for me; it’s only embittered me. Humility bows low and claims the greatest victory a human can ever grasp: God’s prize of peace.
Lysa TerKeurst,
Forgiving What You Can’t Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That's Beautiful Again (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020), 194.
Now, I’m realizing the antithesis of peace isn’t chaos. It’s selfishness. Mine and theirs. Self-care is good. Self-centeredness is not.
The human heart is so very prone to focus on selfish desires to the expense of others. But since I can only change me, I’ll be honest as I look at my own propensities toward selfishness. And the very best way for me to uninvite selfishness is in the humility of forgiveness.
Peace is the evidence of a life of forgiveness.
It’s not that the people all around you are peaceful or that all your relationships are perfectly peaceful all the time. Rather, it’s having a deep-down knowing that you’ve released yourself from the binding effects of the constricting force of unforgiveness and the constraining feelings of unfairness.
You’ve traded all that drama for an upgrade.
Peace.
Living in the comfort of peace is so much better than living in the constraints of unforgiveness.
Lysa TerKeurst,
Forgiving What You Can’t Forget: Discover How to Move On, Make Peace with Painful Memories, and Create a Life That's Beautiful Again (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020), 200.
It was during this seven-year period of prosperity that two sons were born to Joseph and Asenath. These two sons were, of course, destined to give their names to two of the most prominent tribes of Israel.
The boys were named by Joseph in recognition of his unusual experiences. The first was named Manasseh, meaning “Forgetting,” and signifying that God had caused Joseph to forget all the long years of suffering and rejection he had endured—not in the sense that he had no memory of them, of course, but rather that the bitterness had been removed. Joseph could now see, as he later told his brothers (Genesis 50:20), that all of his troubles had been allowed by God for his own good and for his family’s ultimate deliverance.
His second son was named Ephraim (“Doubly Fruitful”) in thankfulness for the manner in which God had so richly blessed him and prospered him, in the very land where he had been unjustly afflicted for so many years.
It is thus that God typically deals with believers, particularly those whom He has called to special service and fruit-bearing. First the testing, then the triumph
Henry M. Morris,
The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1976), 589.
Every fiber of Christ’s being is towards us and for us. His every thought, intention, and affection is to bless us, to love us, to fill us, to inhabit us, to pour himself into us. There is absolutely nothing outside of his sovereign control, and he’s been set as head over all things for the express purpose of blessing the Church.
To know experientially the fullness of God, to know the blessings which he has for us, is wholly wrapped up in our coming to see ever clearer the love the Father has for us in the Son.
God holds nothing back. He has given us all of himself in Christ Jesus.
Part of our struggle to receive the gift of God is this: All our lives we’ve been taught you don’t get something for nothing, and what you earn is in accordance with how hard you work. But outside of faith in Christ’s work, all our good works are essentially against God because they’re an attempt to make a way for ourselves bypassing the cross. The grace of God can’t be owned, bought, or earned. It’s free and it’s never going to end, because we never get to the end of God.
What we call times of revival—whether they cover communities, cities, countries, or the small corner of the world which is our heart—are simply times in which our eyes are opened to see what is already there. The whole world is yours in Christ; God the Father is yours in Christ. Without the assurance of the love of God the Father, mediated to us by the Spirit in the person of his Son, we fear life and are terrified of death. If our hearts aren’t enlightened to the gift of grace that God freely lavishes upon us, we’ll be consumed with needing to “make a way for ourselves” and “twist God’s arm” by our incessant good works to manipulate some small amount of blessing from him. But the Father’s love is unstoppable, unquenchable, and abundantly greater than we could ever ask or hope for. It’s poured out upon us now. May the eyes of your heart be enlightened to see where you really are in Jesus, to see that in him the whole fullness of the Father is yours.
Daniel Bush and Noel S. Due,
Embracing God as Father: Christian Identity in the Family of God (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
An issue that Goforth continually faced with his own mission board related to authority. He regarded the “Holy Spirit’s leading” above the “hard-and-fast rules” of the presbytery under which he served. Thus, according to his wife, “with his convictions concerning Divine guidance of himself, he naturally came often into conflict with other members of the Honan Presbytery,” making him “not easy to get along with.” He insisted that each missionary should have “freedom to carry on his or her work as each one felt led.” It was a difficult issue, and he often “found himself hampered and held back from following fully what he deemed was the Holy Spirit’s leading.”
Ruth A. Tucker,
From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 205.
The Nazarene mission had also started working in the Cajamarca area, but under the auspices of the Committee on Co-operation an agreement was reached to delineate the territories . In 1929 Calvin Mackay was able to ordain two national elders , and the church began to grow rapidly. On occasions Calvin Mackay drew congregations of up to 600 people and in January 1936 a large church building was inaugurated . Unfortunately the work was neither self-supporting nor self- governing. Most of the church expenses were paid from mission funds and from time to time mission boxes were sent out from Scotland for the “poor Indians”. The members of the congregation far from learning to give proper support to the church, came to view their religion primarily as a matter of receiving and not of giving. The government of the church was also in foreign hands. The native elders were not entitled to administer the sacraments and the mission insisted on such high standards of education before ordaining them as pastors that they had no hope of ever playing more than a secondary role in the direction of the church.
Kessler,
Conflict in Missions
The believers in the house churches are not at all sure that they want to be part of the official churches which, in the past, were closely identified with the Three Self Movement. There are several reasons for their reluctance: (1) they have come to enjoy the close fellowship possible only in small groups; (2) they have no desire to reclaim the church buildings closed during the Cultural Revolution; (3) they fear that the newly opened churches will again come under the control of the Three Self Movement, which works closely with the Religious Affairs Bureau of the government; and (4) they are not sure what the government has in mind. Will the present thaw last? Is religious freedom here to stay? Or will they get their fingers burned again as they did during the “Hundred Flowers” campaign in 1957?
J. Herbert Kane,
Understanding Christian Missions
There is no real difference between the man who discovers a Saul in his life and the man who finds an Absalom in his life. In either situation, the corrupt heart will find its ‘justification.’ The Sauls of this world can never see a David; they see only Absalom. The Absaloms of this world can never see a David; they see only Saul.”
