In the Springtime of His Voodoo

In Mark 11:22 Jesus says "Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, 'May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe in your heart that you recieved it, it will be yours. But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too."

Forgiveness has been one of those things that I didn't think I struggled with, mostly because my way of dealing with things is to just not deal with them at all.

When I was in High School my stepfather and I did not get along very well. In fact most of my journal entries from back then included the words "I hate my stepdad - he is ruining my life." When I moved out after graduation our relationship was mostly based on just being polite to each other. Since he and my mom divorced in 2000 I have only talked to him on a very small number of occassions and only because I was forced to.

I've been doing this study on the Torah (http://torahclass.com/download.html) and one of the things the teacher spoke about is the promises of God. God has made promises and immediately the enemy comes like a vulture and tries to carry them away. One of the easiest ways to be carried away is through deception. I have been decieved into the springtime of his voodoo. I have allowed myself to think that life is much more rosey not dealing with this unforgiveness. I have buried this unforgiveness so deep in my heart I did not even remember it existed. Pastor Scott read this scripture as pat of his message this morning.

In Matthew 5:23 Jesus says " Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave the gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother, then come and offer your gift."

What is ironic in a way is that I had read my journal from high school this past week as part of a paper I am writing for class. As I began to think about this scripture more I could clearly see the journal entries I had written so many years ago and my unforgiveness was exposed. It had finally come to light and now it is up to me to deal with it.

I can continue to dodge the issue and never reconcile the relationship with my stepdad, but now I know the consequences and I believe they are too high. One of the consequences is that my relationship with God will suffer. God will not be able to heal that area of my life and Jesus paid a high price for that healing - the stripes upon His back.

The other consequence that will suffer; not having established a good relationship with my stepdad he may never come to know Christ. I may be the only Christian my stepdad will ever know - I may be the only person who is ever able to show Christ's love to him. This price is too high - his very salvation could be at stake!

Part of me wants to hold onto this unforgiveness - it is part of my identity. It gives me the excuse to play the victim and wimp out when things get to be tough.

My next course of action is not to simply just say in my heart that I have forgiven my stepdad. My next step of action is to actually pick up the phone and call him and I need to do it soon, with each passing day he is slipping closer and closer to spending eternity in Hell. I will have failed to run my race fully in preaching Jesus shall I choose to not obey.