Month: February 2021

One day when my son Devon was about four years old, he was pondering God’s being. Not your typical four-year-old activity, I admit. But Devon was a unique child. And as he mused, he had a profound thought. God was greater than the moon and the stars, but he could still fit inside of us. His conclusion?

God is so big. But sometimes he can be so small.

My son’s insight hints at the tension we feel when we think about God’s transcendence and immanence.
Infinite and Intimate
Transcendent is the theological word that means God is above, completely other than, and independent of his creation.
God is infinite in all aspects of his being and never changes. Only he has no source, no beginning, and no end. God needs nothing, depends on nothing, and owes nothing. He is “holy, holy, holy” — perfect in every way. Simply put, God is God and we are not.

“At times, God feels too distant to be loved. At other times, God feels too near to be feared.”

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Except that God is also immanent. God sustains, is involved with, and is present within his creation. He keeps our bodies from exploding apart, grows the grass that livestock eat, and is personally invested in his world (Colossians 1:17; Psalm 104:14, 24–30). Despite how small and sinful we are, he is loving, kind, gentle, compassionate, and good.
In our corporate worship gatherings, as well as our personal interactions with God, we tend to swing between God’s transcendence and immanence like a pendulum. At times, God feels too distant, dissimilar, and above us to be loved. At other times, God feels too near, present, and like us to be feared. It’s an ongoing challenge to hold these two thoughts about God together, but it is massively important that we do, for at least four great reasons.
1. God says he is big and near.
The Bible doesn’t reveal a God who is sometimes fearsome and sometimes approachable. Nor does it depict a God who is sometimes infinitely exalted above us and at other times intimately involved in our affairs. He is both simultaneously.
Scripture never shrinks back from describing God in seemingly contradictory ways. Here are just two examples:

Thus says the One who is high and lifted up,     who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:“I dwell in the high and holy place,     and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,to revive the spirit of the lowly,     and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15)
Who is like the Lord our God,     who is seated on high,who looks far down     on the heavens and the earth?He raises the poor from the dust     and lifts the needy from the ash heap,to make them sit with princes,     with the princes of his people. (Psalm 113:5–8)

God dwells in eternity yet feels at home among the lowly. God is seated on high but makes his way to the ash heap to lift up the needy. In another place, Isaiah reminds us that the Holy One, who is our Maker and Lord, the God of the whole earth, is pleased to refer to himself as our husband and Redeemer (Isaiah 54:5). Where else but in God’s word can we find such a mind-stretching, soul-stirring depiction of God?
The great Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck had it right:

[T]here is no book in the world which to the same extent and in the same way as the Holy Scripture supports the absolute transcendence of God above each and every creature and at the same time supports the intimate relationship between the creature and his Creator. (The Wonderful Works of God, 115)

The Bible reveals a God who is immeasurably greater and more satisfying than any god we could ever conceive of on our own.
2. We want to know God as he is.
We often avoid theological tensions by trying to squeeze God into human boxes. We vacillate between God’s transcendence and immanence lest he appear to have a multiple-personality disorder. But God is not double-minded. He is God. He is holy enough to consume sinners in wrath, and tender enough to envelop us in unending, rapturous delight (Psalm 21:8–9; 16:11). He is powerful enough to keep innumerable blazing stars in their courses, and intimate enough to name each of them and to number the hairs on our heads (Jeremiah 31:35; Psalm 147:4; Luke 12:7).
We are so used to making God in our own image that it can be hard for us to believe he doesn’t act and think like us. Even in preparing to write this article, I was struck by how consistently unimpressive my thoughts about God are. So we end up experiencing brief, scattered moments of awe rather than an ever-intensifying, ever-deepening attitude of wonder.
When we forget God is transcendent, we find it hard and unnecessary to fear him. When we forget God is immanent, we find it hard and unnecessary to love him. But he is both. And that makes us fear and love him all the more.
3. The tension deepens and sweetens worship.
The transcendence and immanence of God are a doorway to deeper and more grateful worship. Our church gatherings and our personal devotions can suffer from a failure to treasure both God’s transcendence and immanence. If God isn’t great, he won’t compel our reverence, fear, and obedience. If we don’t think of him as near, he won’t evoke our gratitude, joy, and amazement.

“The transcendence and immanence of God are a doorway to deeper and more grateful worship.”

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Most churches today tend to emphasize how near God is. We major on feeling comfortable and welcomed. God forbid we should think for a moment that, rather than deserving a fresh-brewed cup of coffee upon our arrival at church, we should be struck dead for the sins we committed just that morning. But apart from God’s mercy, the latter would be more appropriate.
What if we came to a Sunday meeting or began our Bible study with the awareness that we have no way of reaching the God we’re wanting to meet with unless he provides one? Wouldn’t we sing louder and read our Bibles more intentionally if we understood that the God who invites us into intimate fellowship created the universe from nothing and that his “is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is [his]” (1 Chronicles 29:11)?
At the same time, seeking to engage with a God who we see as only transcendent can lead to worship that is dutiful, boring, distasteful, or even irrational. We can begin to question why we keep praying to a God so far away, singing songs to a God who might not hear us, and listening to preaching about a God who doesn’t seem very connected to (or interested in) his world.
God made us in his image, and he is infinitely distinct from us. Both are true. And the more we understand how different he is, the more we will marvel that he has chosen to draw near to us, that he knows us, calls us by name, and delights in us. Which leads to a final reason why holding God’s immanence and transcendence in tension is so crucial.
4. The tension illuminates the gospel.
Countless Christians live with a deficient experience of the gospel. They can affirm that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who lived a perfect life, died on the cross to take their punishment, and rose from the dead for their justification. But it doesn’t make much of a difference in their daily lives. Rather than a source of comfort and joy, it’s an abstract doctrine that assures them they won’t go to hell when they die.
But when seen in light of God’s transcendence — his holy otherness, absolute perfection, limitless knowledge, inescapability, and unswerving eternal commitment to justice — the gospel becomes unspeakably good news. It reveals God’s immanent heart of compassion, mercy, kindness, and goodness beyond our ability to take it in. It is truly a love that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:19).
And now that Jesus and the Father have sent forth the Holy Spirit, God reveals his presence not only around us, but within us (John 14:26; John 15:26). The God who knows no limits of time, space, or properties has taken up residence in our hearts (1 Kings 8:27; 1 Corinthians 6:19). All this is why God alone can say, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22).
There is no one like him. He truly can and does save. He is holiness and mercy, grace and truth, sovereign and servant, God and man. He is over all, through all, and in all (Ephesians 4:6). May our thoughts and worship of God increasingly reflect who he really is, for our endless joy and God’s endless praise.
He is so big. But he can be so small. […]

If we reach back to the beginning of our long and devastating history with sin, we will find a crowd of excuses. When the fruit touched Adam’s and Eve’s lips, “You see, what had happened was . . .” became stamped upon them.
Instead of contrition and confession, Adam tried to pass his blame to his wife: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). Adam was not responsible. It was “the woman” — or even the God who gave her to him. Eve, following suit, passed the blame farther downfield: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13).
What they had never seen practiced became natural. The first man and woman, our parents, discovered in the forbidden fruit the idea to cover up their evil. And this knowledge was passed down to their children. The gardens of humanity’s mind became well stocked with fig leaves to cover our sin’s nakedness. All of us have become tailors and seamstresses, dressing up our failures in fine clothing.
Flaming Coals Toward Heaven
From the fall onward, few features display the creativity of Adam’s family better than our attempts to evade blame. Aaron and the sluggard of Proverbs are two of my favorite examples.

“From the fall onward, few features display the creativity of Adam’s family better than our attempts to evade blame.”

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When Moses came down the mountain to find Aaron leading the people in idol worship, Aaron explained his part to Moses this way: “They gave [the gold] to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf” (Exodus 32:24). Out came this calf. No one crafted it; no one made it — an innocent throwing of gold into the fire and, lo and behold, out popped an idol.
Or consider the depiction of the lazy man’s inventions in Proverbs. To explain why he will not leave his bed and go to work, the sluggard protests, “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!” (Proverbs 22:13; 26:13). Oh, he would work, he assures you between yawns, if it weren’t for those man-eating lions roaming the streets of Jerusalem.
It is quite a shocking revelation that men, with all their professed desire for unhindered free will, often do not, at bottom, want anything of the kind. In God’s world, liberty of action entails bondage to responsibility. And responsibility for our actions is one thing sinners do not want. Praise we receive without qualification; fault we pass off like burning coals.
When caught in transgression, we too blame spouses, our idol-making fires, or the serpent. Or when we have left our duty undone, we too invent our own lions roaming the streets. And like Adam, our inventions do not remain horizontal. We soon heave our flaming coals toward heaven.
Born This Way
As time has passed, our alibis have grown more sophisticated — some have even gone to seminary. After studying the exhaustive sovereignty of God, and his hand of providence, some have concluded that they cannot be responsible for their sin. Add to this Scripture’s revelation of their inability, and they have more than enough excuses to keep them from obedience, faith, or love toward God and neighbor. How could God expect wingless birds to fly?
I’ve talked with a few such men. They would stop looking at pornography, sleeping with their girlfriends, getting drunk, and living for the pleasures of this world — if it were up to them. But they cannot. This must be God’s providence for their lives. If he willed differently, they would be living differently. They have read their Bibles, they assure me. They know they are slaves of sin, dead in trespasses — that they were born this way. Indeed, their mothers had conceived them in sin.
As far as it remains with them, they say, their case is hopeless. They have a depraved nature; they are sold to sin under Adam. If Christ wills, perhaps, they will be healed. But until then, how can it be their fault that they lie in the pit of sin? They can’t raise themselves from the dead or give themselves new hearts. They are completely unable to please God; how can they turn until God’s governance of them turns? “Can a man receive even one thing but from heaven?” (see John 3:27). If his sovereign election depends not on human will or exertion, and if God can harden whom he wills, “Why does he still find fault?” (Romans 9:19).
Their Reformed TULIP is missing several petals. They know themselves depraved, know Christ died for his own, know they need irresistible grace — but until God gives it, how can they be faulted for resisting? And so, they continue twirling the flower about to absolve themselves of living in sin, half-heartedly waiting for God to intercede and save them.
Sinners Under a Sovereign God
They are right to point out that they are dead in their sin (Ephesians 2:1). They do need new hearts that only God can give (John 3:3–5; Ezekiel 36:26). They are slaves to sin apart from Christ (Romans 6:20). They walk according to the flesh, and cannot please God (Romans 8:6–8). And God is completely in control of every detail in the world, including their eternal salvation (Ephesians 1:11). But such does not acknowledge the full-orbed picture Scripture gives of the place of human wills and of the human addiction to sin.
Such men, who paint themselves as merely blowing in the winds of God’s providence, and who therefore conclude that they are not responsible for their sin, have not considered how God describes rebellion as active and willful, putting sinners themselves as the subjects, not the objects, of their treacherous ways.
“You refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:40).
“How often would I have gathered your children together . . . and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).
“People loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19).
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
“They . . . went after worthlessness, and became worthless” (Jeremiah 2:5).
“He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray” (Proverbs 5:23).

“In God’s world, God is sovereign over all sin, and men are still completely responsible for it.”

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In God’s world, God is fully sovereign over all sin, and men are fully responsible for their sin. The vilest crime in the history of the world, the killing of God’s Son, is so spoken of in Scripture. “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). This sin of all sin was perpetrated under the definite script of the Writer’s pen stroke, and it was enacted at the hands of lawless men who chose to drive the nails.
The God Who Bears Our Sin
Men are not Pinocchios, dangling limply at the end of providence. We do not imagine ourselves to be so when it comes time to receive the credit, but we do when it comes time to receive the blame. Under God’s sovereign direction, scribing every jot and tittle of a story riddled with both the praiseworthy and sinful choices of men, he has given us dignity of choice. And we have chosen — to a man, lured by his own desires (James 1:14–15) — that which is not God.
But the wonder of all wonders is that onto the stage came God himself, the Son taking on human form, to shoulder responsibility for the sin of others. While we were pointing the finger at anyone or anything to get off the hook, he came to be pierced on our hooks, standing accused in silence, and bearing the awful weight of the horrible consequences of sin: wrath and death.
And he did not die for excuses, but for sins. Not for excusable men who could do no other, but for the willfully disobedient, caught in their trespasses. He came as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In love, he is the blame-taking God.
Free to Take the Blame
Should all men everywhere not seek this God? While we cannot save ourselves or cast off the horrible yoke of slavery to sin, sinners everywhere can do more than indulge and wait for hell. They can — they must — go to this wonderful God. He invites all,

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6–7)

Why should they remain in the pigsty when such a father dwells but over the hill, and will run to meet them? No one can save himself, but all are summoned to go to the one who can save them and cling to him as the only vessel in the shipwreck of our fallen humanity.
And when we find him, his providence, rather than excusing us from obedience, becomes our reason for obedience: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). By God’s grace, every temptation now has an exit door.
And when we do fail to travel through it, we do not need to make sure others own their part before we own ours. We don’t need to play dumb, or blame our circumstances, or invent predators in our way. Christians alone can look our sin square in the face and own it, confess it, and apologize for it, because we alone know a Savior who died to forgive it. […]

Whew. We’re all certainly living in uncertain times. It feels like every time I turn on the television or scroll through my newsfeed, there is an unsettling photo of someone gravely sick or a heated political debate among friends. Seeing the constant stream of upsetting stories, unprecedented health warnings, and watching buildings destroyed in my beloved city of Atlanta over the past few months and weeks have caused me so much fear and anxiety. I’ve stayed awake at night worrying about my housebound parents, adult children homeschooling my grandchildren, my nurse daughter-in-law on the front lines of the virus, and my business which remained closed for months as we all sheltered in place.
Those of you who know me from my starring role in Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta or have visited my Atlanta-based bridal salon, Bridals by Lori, know that I’m the girl with an upbeat spirit, positive attitude, and reassuring hug (or air hug nowadays). No matter what, I typically look on the bright side — as annoying as it can be to my nearest and dearest. But over the past few months, I’ve failed in this area as I let worry and anxiety rule in my heart. During my morning quiet time recently, God reminded me that all of this worry and anxiety I’m carrying doesn’t accomplish anything. Not only is it unhealthy mentally and physically, but it shows me the many opportunities I have to strengthen my faith. What did the hand-wringing and sleepless nights accomplish? In my opinion, it only added stress and turmoil to my life. And I bet it’s doing the same for you.
Throughout the Bible, the common themes of fear, worry, and anxiety are addressed. These natural human emotions are part of our sin-nature and block us from openly receiving the fullness of God’s grace.
In Philippians, we’re reminded that God is ready and willing to provide His perfect peace if we just ask:
Philippians 4:6-7 says,
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
In 1 Peter, God provides a simple and beautiful reminder of His love and provision:
1 Peter 5:7 says,
Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.
How has your mind and heart handled all the world has served us during this season? If you’re struggling with worry and anxiety, please know that you’re not alone. I wish I could fix the heartache of the world or promise you a world without suffering, but all I can offer is the hope that is in Jesus — and the peace that only He can give. Please stop carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, because He wants to carry it for you.
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Respond
Be sure you’re taking a few minutes every day to be quiet and sit with Jesus. For me, this is first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee. But take the pressure off and know that there is no perfect time or place. During your quiet moments, jot down your stresses and, in prayer, give each of those worries to Him. After the prayer, crumble up this piece of paper, throw it away, and move on. God has got this!
I also want you to take some time to jot down things you’re looking forward to in your life. This could be having lunch with your closest friends, putting your toes in the sand and surf, or finally making time for that hobby. Realizing that there is beauty in the world and that the best is yet to come will give you reassurance and hope. Like I said, there is always a bright side!
Written for Faith.Full by Lori Allen, Author of Say Yes to What’s Next.
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Your Turn
Are you feeling anxious? Join the club! Let’s link arms together and pray over our concerns and then hand them to God. We can’t handle it or fix anything, but He can! Come share your thoughts with us on our blog. We want to hear from you! ~ Laurie McClure, Faith.Full […]

Revenge builds a lonely house. Space enough for one person. The lives of its tenants are reduced to one goal: make someone miserable. They do. Themselves.
No wonder God insists that we “keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time” (Hebrews 12:15).

His healing includes a move out of the house of spite, a shift away from the cramped world of grudge and toward spacious ways of grace, away from hardness and toward forgiveness. He moves us forward by healing our past.

Can He really? This mess? This history of sexual abuse? This raw anger at the father who left my mother? This seething disgust I feel every time I think of the one who treated me like yesterday’s trash? Can God heal this ancient hurt in my heart?
Joseph asked these questions. You never outlive the memory of ten brothers giving you the heave-ho. They walked away and never came back. So he gave them a taste of their own medicine. When he saw them in the breadline, he snapped at them. He accused them of treachery and threw them in jail. “Take that, you rascals!”
Isn’t it good to know that Joseph was human? The guy was so good it hurt. He endured slavery, succeeded in a foreign land, mastered a new language, and resisted sexual seductions. He was the model prisoner and the perfect counselor to the king. Scratch him, and he bled holy blood. We expect him to see his brothers and declare, “Father, forgive them, for they knew not what they did” (see Luke 23:34). But he didn’t. He didn’t because forgiving jerks is the hardest trick in the bag. We will feed the poor and counsel the king. Why, we’ll memorize the book of Leviticus if God says to do so.
But…

Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry (Ephesians 4:26)?
Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice (Ephesians 4:31)?
As Christ forgave you, so you also must do (Colossians 3:13)?
Really, God?

I have a friend who was six years old when her mother ran off with a salesman, leaving her to be raised by a good-hearted dad who knew nothing about dolls, dresses, or dates. The father and daughter stumbled through life and made the best of it. Recently the mom reappeared, like a brother out of Canaan, requested a coffee date with my friend, and said, “I’m sorry for abandoning you.” The mom wants to reenter her daughter’s world.
My friend’s first thought was, That’s it? I’m supposed to forgive you? Seems too easy. Doesn’t the mom need to experience what she gave? A few years wondering if she will see her daughter again. Some pain-filled nights. A bit of justice. How do we reconcile the pain of the daughter with God’s command to forgive?
Isn’t some vengeance in order? Of course it is. In fact, God cares about justice more than we do. Paul admonished, Never pay back evil for evil… never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God, for he has said that he will repay those who deserve it (Romans 12:17, Romans 12:19).
We fear the evildoer will slip into the night, unknown and unpunished. Escape to Fiji and sip mai tais on the beach. Not to worry.

Scripture says, “[God] will repay,” not He “might repay.”

God will get through this execute justice on behalf of truth and fairness. Case in point? Prepare yourself for the most surprising turnaround of the Joseph story.
After three days Joseph released all but one brother from jail. They returned to Canaan to report to Jacob, their father, a weak shadow of an old man. The brothers told him how Simeon was kept in Egypt as assurance they would return with Benjamin, the youngest brother. Jacob had nothing to say except, “You have bereaved me: Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin. All these things are against me” (Genesis 42:36).

Such a louse. Jacob played favorites, refused to discipline, had multiple wives, and upon hearing of the imprisonment of his son, had a pity party. What a prima donna. No wonder the family was screwed up.

But as we read further, a light breaks through the clouds. Judah, who once wanted to get rid of Joseph, stepped forward. “Send [Benjamin] with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I myself will be surety for him; from my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever” (Genesis 43:8–9).

Is this the same Judah? The same man who said, “Let us sell him to the Ishmaelites” (Genesis 37:27)? The same brother who helped negotiate the slave trade? Well, yes… and no. Judah, as it turns out, has had his own descent into the pit.

After Joseph’s abduction Judah went on to have three sons. He arranged for the eldest to marry a girl named Tamar. But the son died. Following the proper protocol of his day, Judah arranged for his second son to marry Tamar. The son didn’t manage the situation well and died. Judah assumed Tamar was jinxed. Afraid that his third son would meet the same fate, Judah put the matter on hold, leaving Tamar with no husband.
Later Judah’s wife died. Tamar heard that Judah was coming to town. Apparently she hadn’t been able to get Judah to reply to her e-mails, so she got creative. She disguised herself as a prostitute and made him an offer. Judah took the bait. He exchanged his necklace and walking stick for sex, unaware that he was sleeping with his daughter-in-law. (Oh, how lust blinds a man!) She conceived.
Three months later she reappeared in Judah’s life as Tamar, pregnant Tamar. Judah went high and mighty on her and demanded she be burned. That’s when she produced Judah’s necklace and walking stick, and Judah realized the child was his. He was caught in his own sin, disgraced in front of his own family. Things had come full circle. Judah, who had deceived Jacob, was deceived. Judah, who had trapped Joseph, was trapped. Judah, who had helped humiliate Joseph, was humiliated. God gave Judah his comeuppance, and Judah came to his senses. “She has been more righteous than I,” he confessed (Genesis 38:26).
For years I wondered why Judah’s exploits were included in the Joseph narrative. They interrupt everything. We just get started in chapter 37 with the dreams and drama of Joseph when the narrator dedicates chapter 38 to the story of Judah, the hustler, and Tamar, the faux escort. Two dead husbands. One clever widow. An odd, poorly placed story. But now I see how it fits.

For anything good to happen to Jacob’s family, someone in the clan had to grow up. If not the father, one of the brothers had to mature to the point where he took responsibility for his actions.

God activated the change in Judah. He gave the guy a taste of his own medicine, and the medicine worked! Judah championed the family cause. He spoke sense into his father’s head. He was willing to take responsibility for Benjamin’s safety and bear the blame if he failed. Judah got his wake-up call, and Joseph didn’t have to lift a finger or swing a fist.

Vengeance is God’s. He will repay — whether ultimately on the Day of Judgment or intermediately in this life.

The point of the story?

God handles all Judahs. He can discipline your abusive boss, soften your angry parent. He can bring your ex to his knees or her senses. Forgiveness doesn’t diminish justice; it just entrusts it to God.

He guarantees the right retribution. We give too much or too little. But the God of justice has the precise prescription.
Unlike us, God never gives up on a person. Never. Long after we have moved on, God is still there, probing the conscience, stirring conviction, always orchestrating redemption. Fix your enemies? That’s God’s job.
Forgive your enemies? Ah, that’s where you and I come in. We forgive.
“Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity” (Ephesians 4:26–27). The word translated opportunity is the Greek word topos, the same term from which we get the English noun topography. It means territory or ground. Interesting.

Anger gives ground to the devil. Bitterness invites him to occupy a space in your heart, to rent a room. Believe me, he will move in and stink up the place. Gossip, slander, temper — anytime you see these, Satan has claimed a bunk.

Evict him. Don’t even give him the time of day. In the name of Jesus tell him to pack his bags and hit the road. Begin the process of forgiveness. Keep no list of wrongs. Pray for your antagonists rather than plot against them. Hate the wrong without hating wrongdoers. Turn your attention away from what they did to you to what Jesus did for you. Outrageous as it may seem, Jesus died for them too. If He thinks they are worth forgiving, they are. Does that make forgiveness easy? No. Quick? Seldom. Painless? It wasn’t for Joseph.
The brothers returned to Egypt from Canaan, Benjamin in tow. Joseph invited them to a dinner. He asked about Jacob, spotted Benjamin, and all but came undone. “God be gracious to you, my son,” he blurted before he hurried out of the room to weep (Genesis 43:29).
He returned to eat and drink and make merry with the brothers. Joseph sat them according to birth order. He singled out Benjamin for special treatment. Every time the brothers got one helping, Benjamin got five. They noticed this. But said nothing.

Joseph loaded their sacks with food and hid his personal cup in the sack of Benjamin.

The brothers were barely down the road when Joseph’s steward stopped their caravan, searched their sacks, and found the cup. The brothers tore their clothes (the ancient equivalent of pulling out one’s hair) and soon found themselves back in front of Joseph, fearing for their lives.
Joseph couldn’t make up his mind! He welcomed them, wept over them, ate with them, and then played a trick on them. He was at war with himself. These brothers had peeled the scab off his oldest and deepest wound. And he would be hanged before he’d let them do it again. On the other hand, these were his brothers, and he would be hanged before he lost them again.

Forgiveness vacillates like this. It has fits and starts, good days and bad. Anger intermingled with love. Irregular mercy. We make progress only to make a wrong turn. Step forward and fall back. But this is okay. When it comes to forgiveness, all of us are beginners. No one owns a secret formula. As long as you are trying to forgive, you are forgiving. It’s when you no longer try that bitterness sets in.

Stay the course. You’ll spend less time in the spite house and more in the grace house. And as one who has walked the hallways of both, I can guarantee that you are going to love the space of grace.
Excerpted with permission from You’ll Get Through This by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.
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Your Turn
Where are you on the journey of forgiveness? Have you made progress? Have you seemed to start back at ground zero and been frustrated? Do you have people in your life that, even after a relatively long period of time, you can’t seem to forgive. Come join the conversation on our blog! We want to hear from you! ~ Devotionals Daily […]