The Cat in the Bag

03.07.15

Matthew 6.14-15 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. – Jesus (ESV)

Last night Cathy and I went to a gathering of about five or so hundred people and listened to a woman give a talk about God’s redemption. She made the claim several times through anecdotes about various people she’s encountered over the years that God can redeem anything. The stories she told were about the broken lives of people she’d encountered and how God has used her to help these people become free to the love of Jesus.

She didn’t tell us the happy endings; she didn’t tell us how these people are now married and have children and their lives are renewed and perfect and without any ripples. No, she just told us that God can redeem anything we give to Him. That really got my attention as I sat and listened and tried to decide what I was still holding onto and keeping for myself (rather than giving to God). Her words made me think.

When Cathy and I got home we debriefed as couples often do and we talked about what this woman said. And it came to me that she perfectly explained the danger of unforgiveness. What she said about God redeeming everything was true with one caveat: God can’t redeem the things we won’t give Him. I thought: that is where we are when we won’t (or can’t) forgive. The whole business of unforgiveness is horrible: it’s holding onto things that eat away at us like a parasite. And the result is bitterness, anger, pain, misery, and a host of terrible things that eat us alive mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Jesus said this in Matthew 6: if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. God will because God can. God won’t because God can’t. Is there anything God can’t do? Maybe we ought to give this un-forgiveness thing some more thought. Maybe we ought to examine our hearts to see what we’re holding onto that is blocking God from setting us free and redeeming us completely.

Maybe we’ll show up at Heaven’s door and find the baggage we’ve brought with us is too big to fit through the door. Maybe God wants us to be free and unencumbered in our face-to-face meeting with Him, and unforgiveness is the filthy, putrid crap we’re trying to bring into His living room and dump all over the floor. And maybe the unforgiveness we hold onto is the same crap that causes others to sidle away from us after a brief encounter or two because we let that loathsome cat out of the bag.

God can redeem anything. Except. That which we won’t give Him; that which we keep to ourselves.

O Father! Free me from the things I hold onto. Reveal to me the things I cannot see and need to deal with. God help me to be completely free when I come into Your presence. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! Thank You Father. Amen.