Ephesians 4 | Automatic Responses

Years ago I was listening to Beth Moore, a women’s bible study teacher and something she said stuck with me. I don’t remember the exact quote, but she said something about praying that her automatic responses would be godly ones. Do you know what I am talking about?

The other day I was driving home and was stopped at a light. I was turning left across traffic, so when the light changed I took a second, literally just one second, to make sure I had an arrow before turning. In that second, the person in the car behind me honked impatiently. Was my automatic response godly? Umm…no.

I managed to hold it together and made no gestures to my impatient fellow driver, but it really chapped my hide and I struggled the rest of the way home, with steam coming out of my ears.

Ephesians 4:32 NKJV says:
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

The Amplified bible puts it this way:
Be kind and helpful to one another, tender-hearted [compassionate, understanding], forgiving one another [readily and freely], just as God in Christ also forgave you.

The Message:
Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.

This was just a brief interaction with someone I was never going to see again. It took only a short time to realize that this was a slight offense, to let it go, consciously forgive and move on. But it wasn’t automatic.

There have been times that slight offenses have taken longer for me to let go of.

Then there are the not-so-slight offenses–the repeated offenses, the deep offenses, the ones that threaten my self-esteem, the heart-breaking ones. My automatic response? To defend myself. To justify myself. To at least ponder retaliation. If nothing else, to voice my dismay about my offender.

But honestly, despite all that, I really do want to be a person who forgives, who has grace, who wants healing on both sides of the relationship. It’s just obvious that it doesn’t come naturally and I can’t do it on my own.

A few years ago, during one of our church prayer night gatherings, I had an epiphany! Jesus finally drove it home to me, that it was never intended that I go it alone. That is why Jesus made a way.

John 17: 20-23 NKJV
20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

Romans 7:21-25 NKJV
21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

In verses 4-6 of Ephesians 4 the word “one” is used 7 times to describe our life in the Spirit, as a church, in God. And how can we be “one” if we can’t forgive each other and leave the judging to God.

Jesus is not unaware of our difficulty in forgiving others, especially when our offense is justified. Can you imagine the number of times Jesus was offended by others walking around on this planet for 33 years? His response was to give His life for them.

A life of forgiveness is a huge ask. But it is essential to God’s plan for our being “one”. For our well-being. And He didn’t leave us to tackle it alone. We have His example, and more importantly we have His Spirit! Jesus lives in me.

I don’t want to be flippant and pretend that it is easy. It’s not. I don’t know if forgiveness will ever become automatic for me in this lifetime, but I do believe it is worth the struggle to be a part of what God has in store for us–for the oneness he promises us. I pray for me and for you that He will give us the grace to always be able to come to a place of forgiveness just as He has forgiven us.

Colossians 1:27 NKJV
To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

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About the Author

Darla loves God and is the Digital Media & Communications Director for CitySalt Church. She is a graphic designer and an entrepreneur. Always learning. Eternally grateful for her wonderful and supporting husband Mark and faithful friends who are are pillars of encouragement in all her endeavors.

Mark and Darla have no children but have the privilege of loving a gaggle of ever expanding nieces and nephews.

Love Your Enemies | The Freedom of Forgiveness

What started out as an innocent misunderstanding with a neighbor has turned into a cold war of unforgiveness and limited contact. We live in the same townhouse complex, directly across the driveway from each other. Our last regular conversation ended last year, with her shouting at me “I will never talk to you again!” This is difficult to do, because she has developed a surrogate mother-daughter relationship with my immediate, next-door neighbor, whose front door is less than 6 feet from mine. I see this angry neighbor every day.

She turns her back to me if we pass each other on the sidewalk. And when she sees me pulling weeds in my front yard as she walks her dog past my home, she will say critical things about me to her dog, in a voice loud enough for me to hear.

I hate this! I’ve apologized, but my invitations to talk things over with her are ignored with no eye contact. I am no stranger to the silent treatment. One of my primary relatives would not talk to me for days even when I was a child, while we lived in the same house.

When I chose my personal relationship with Christ as my life’s priority, and took time to read my Bible, I learned it was my responsibility to initiate the healing by forgiving others first. I would make attempts to forgive regardless of the other person’s response, but I did not know how to manage my childhood pattern of responding with resentment and anxiety. Over the years, I found it easier to withdraw in self-protection.

Matthew 5:44-45 TPT
“However, I say to you, love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them. For that will reveal your identity as children of our heavenly Father.”

This tense situation has slowly escalated over the last year. And I’ve had the growing suspicion that Christ is giving me an opportunity to create new habits and better manage my emotions in a godly way. I started praying for my resistant neighbor, and a surprising thing happened.

On a particular morning I woke up feeling like a storm had passed. The usual buzz of tension and guilt I would wake up with was gone, and the air around my mind was quiet. I strongly felt this was no coincidence. Freedom comes with obedience. And I felt this glimpse of freedom was my reward. Praying for my neighbor is still not easy, but I am pressing into this obedience which is delivering me from my mind’s jail.

Importantly, this uncomfortable situation continues to reveal my incomplete areas. And I pray, ‘Lord help me to remember to bring my broken places to you so you can repair them with your healing love.’ My childhood pattern was to withdraw from the pain of being shut out. My broken relationship with my neighbor is teaching me to stop denying my dysfunction, face my responsibility, and choose instead to pray for her. This is the key part of my battle.

Matthew 5:45-46 TPT
“He is kind to all by bringing the sunrise to warm and rainfall to refresh, whether a person does what is good or evil. What reward do you deserve if you only love the loveable? Don’t even the tax collectors do that?”

I used to feel imprisoned and condemned by my relative’s anger and silent treatment, but Christ has spared me from spiritual death in a sustained rescue that has spanned decades. I see it clearly as I review my past life events. And I know that nothing can separate me from his love, and His love is all I need.

I feel Christ’s nudge guiding me to refuse darkness, as a type of victory, by turning my back on the disabling resentment that would try to attach itself to me. And to learn to laugh at the imperfect situations, because Christ has disarmed our spiritual adversary, who can no longer hurt us. This frees me to have empathy for my perceived enemies. Even to go the further step and pray for them!

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About the Author

Sara has attended CitySalt Church since 2004, the year it was founded. She studied Journalism, wrote for her college newspaper, and is a member of Oregon Christian Writers. Sara also enjoys singing hymns with friends: “there is a sermon in every hymn waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.”

Love Purified | God’s Healing Love

I’ve never served time in jail. But I have spent too much time, off and on, in an internal prison of self-condemnation after personal failures. Since childhood, a pattern of condemnation assaulted my mind with lies. These lies were aimed at convicting me of being too flawed to have any hope of self-improvement.

But God broke through and told me that my paralyzing inner prison was not the end of my story. Christ offers me redemption by teaching me new life skills through the learning of life lessons. Jesus met me at my most painful times of paralyzing condemnation, and set me free with His healing love.

God’s healing love is often found in people who have gone through the healing process themselves. This love gives me the room to fail and then turn to God on my own, for resolution. People who are conduits of God’s healing love are those who have let go of their opportunity to judge me at my point of failure, have chosen to forgive, and leave me in God’s care.

I have experienced God’s healing love with friends who believe in the best possible future for me. They have caught a vision of me as my best self and they trust God to bring it to pass in my life.

This healing love has freed me to pursue my learning experience with God, to learn more of the lesson He is actively teaching me. God’s healing love, combined with my friend’s forgiveness and acceptance in brotherly love, has helped me rise again from the figurative death of my failures, to live again in God’s redemptive love.

In a recent time of solitude, I heard God communicate I had starved myself of His Love. I had neglected to receive the life-sustaining nourishment of His love. This opened a galaxy of thought in my mind. How could this be? But it was true. My early life experience taught me love was something I had to earn, and it was issued sparingly. The concept of being given unconditional love is not something I can comprehend. And I’m aware I live with this contradiction - I can gladly give my deeply-felt love to others, but receiving it still shocks me. It comes from wrong information I learned from my youth--lies that would tell me I was defective and not qualified for continued acceptance and inclusion in the lives of people, even those I considered friends.

Throughout my adult life, I lived with a rigid pattern of self-condemnation and deprivation of self-love. Subconsciously, I put myself in a kind of adult time-out because I had failed. And I didn’t allow myself to move on and try again, but instead, I stayed stuck. I finally recognized the self-condemnation, which I hated, but thought I deserved. Forgiveness from others and myself, breaks this pattern. I have lived outside of my self-imposed prison long enough, so that the freedom of self-forgiveness is my new normal. I recently noticed significant evidence of God’s healing love in my life.

My neighbor Cathy recently bought a dog which surprised many of us in our condo complex. Such a big commitment of time, effort, and money for a single person who works full-time. But we all cooed and smiled when she brought her beautiful Labrador Retriever puppy home and took him for walks.

One day she walked up to me in the parking lot and started to tell me about the hardships of her puppy chewing her shoes and urinating on the carpet. I was late for an appointment and didn’t have time to talk. I should have told her this kindly and gently, but instead I exercised what I thought was merciful self-restraint. I stopped myself from bluntly telling her she should not complain about her choice, and limited myself to one sentence, saying “Well, that’s what puppies do.”

Unfortunately, Cathy did not catch my hint that I was not able to talk with her then, and she continued her complaints. I awkwardly repeated my response, “That’s what puppies do.” Then I saw the hurt in her eyes. This caused me pain also when I realized she received my comment as rejection, and I know that feeling too well. I tried to apologize and asked if we could talk later, but she quickly turned away and walked across the parking lot to her condo.

A few days later, I saw her in the parking lot, and called out to her. No response. I called her name again, still no response. I walked up to her and by now her back was turned to me. So, I tried to walk around to face her and started to apologize, when she quickly spun to face me fully, and shouted, “No! You do not get to talk to me now, maybe later.” And I replied, “But I want to apologize!” “She repeated, “Not now!”

Thankfully, I’ve learned to get past my own hurt feelings and walk away from another people’s sudden loss of temper. I walked home and sat on my couch with the very familiar tear-filled eyes and tight stomach that I experienced after receiving a burst of rage during childhood. But this time I didn’t second guess my choice of action. My apology was the right thing to do. And I let go of needing her to forgive me instantly. I repented to God and received His forgiveness and peace.

A couple of weeks later I saw Cathy on the sidewalk in our complex, walking her dog. I was driving home and was in the driveway almost at my home, when a holy spirit idea dropped into my mind. I responded by pulling my car over to face her, rolled down my window and said “Hi, when you feel ready, let’s talk through what happened.” But I didn’t get a chance to continue. Cathy said “No, I want to apologize to you! She explained “I received feedback from several other people telling me I was not prepared to raise a puppy by myself. Your comment put me over the edge and I lost my temper. Will you forgive me?

I stood there with a slightly dropped jaw and then quickly recomposed myself, and uttered a brief “Oh, okay! Yes I do! And I ask you to forgive me!” She did, and then we then talked it out, while her 6-month-old puppy chewed on his leash.

What a sense of relief I felt at that moment, which I didn’t get to experience much in my past. But those stifled experiences from childhood have value, in that they serve to motivate me to not let the sun go down on my anger. Now that I have tasted freedom from wrath, I am no longer willing to spend time in someone’s anger jail.

God’s healing love gives me a greater sense of personal freedom, step by step. In addition to taking time in my day to quiet my mind and enter into God’s presence, I also set aside time to ask God for His wonderful, healing love which changes me from glory to glory. And I am so very thankful for my friends and prayer partners who share God’s love with me through forgiveness and acceptance.

My current, self-written, motto for this spiritual season in my life is “Take time to Nourish yourself with love, mercy, and peace from Christ. You are deeply loved by Jesus, our Heavenly Father, and the Holy Spirit. And everything is going to work out in your life, according to God’s loving plan. It is well with my soul.”

1 Corinthians 13:6-7 MSG
“Love never gives up,...Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.”

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About the Author

Sara has attended CitySalt Church since 2004, the year it was founded. She studied Journalism, wrote for her college newspaper, and is a member of Oregon Christian Writers. Sara also enjoys singing hymns with friends: “there is a sermon in every hymn waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.”

Forgiveness | The Lord is Our Redemption

The Lord is our redemption; He teaches us to forgive; He is our source

18Who is a God like you, who removes guilt

and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;

Who does not persist in anger forever,

but instead delights in mercy,

19And will again have compassion on us,

treading underfoot our iniquities?

You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins;

20You will show faithfulness to Jacob,

and loyalty to Abraham,

As you have sworn to our ancestors

from days of old.

Micah 7:18-20

I believe we are tasked to spend our days in this journey, that is life on Earth, aiming to be a vehicle of light in this world.

Resentment, justice, fairness – these are not meant to lead us astray from this goal, nor to out rank the task of spreading light.

It’s true that justice and fairness (as well as humility) are important when tasked with positions of leadership or maneuvering a difficult situation. Yet when struggling through a time when someone has hurt you, taking an emotional stance in the name of justice and fairness only brings more trouble to us and those around us. It can lead to sadness, then to anger and resentment. May we instead, move closer to the Lord and “delight in mercy.”

The more I ponder these deep and powerful emotions and choices, the more I believe that fairness and justice have no place in the process of healing through forgiveness.

We are tasked to be vehicles of light in this world.

In seasons of heartache and struggle, expecting those that hurt us to owe us anything seems to foster deeper resentment. We cannot control their choices, no one really owes us anything emotionally. God is our source of fulfillment and healing.

Maybe all anyone owes at all is a personal goal to be their own vehicle of light. And maybe it doesn’t really have anything to do with me or you. Their choices are between them and God. Your healing is between you and God.

We are tasked to be vehicles of light in this world.

Maybe all anyone owes you, is to do their best to forgive, regardless of and irrelevant to those that did the hurting.

Or maybe they just do not owe you anything.

God is our source of fulfillment and healing.

I have been hurt and I have hurt others. I have found in my own experience, healing is not tied to our ability to talk things out or come to a place of understanding. Our separate journeys of forgiveness and redemption lead us forward on our paths with the Lord.

God is our source of fulfillment and healing. Through Him we can forgive others and ourselves, through Him we can find redemption. We are tasked to spend our days in this journey that is life on Earth, aiming to be a vehicle of light in this world.

Two people, each turning to God for forgiveness and redemption, will find their way back to one another, should their paths be meant to intertwine. Either way, let us follow the Lord, “Who does not persist in anger forever, but instead delights in mercy”.

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About the Author

Leona is a wife, mother and traveler who is intrigued by how different people live. Her latest project is exploring ways that different walks of life can simplify, in order to live a fulfilling journey.

Forgiveness | Generosity Unleashed!

Make your way downtown to NE Court Street in the heart of Salem and you will find the most delightful bread shop on the planet. Yes, the bread is good -- In fact very good. Some would boast it to be the “best bread in the world.” But the thing that sets this shop apart from the rest is their contagious generosity. Whether you are a paying customer or not, their generous spirit is as palatable as the fresh slice of whole wheat bread you’ll find yourself eating when you walk through their doors. Spend a lunch hour watching this establishment serve people and you will find a cheerful, sincere and delightful worker who denies nobody and asks everybody, “Would you like a piece of bread?”

As Christ-followers, we are expected to be generous. Because of God’s move to forgive our waywardness by way of the cross, we have the privilege of being a distribution station of His great love. In Matthew 18:23-35, Jesus illustrates the imperative of forgiveness. As we consider this story, may we be moved to freely RECEIVE God’s compassion, mercy and grace when at our worst, and generously DISTRIBUTE these same goods when we experience the worst in others.

His Bread is Life,
Pastor Dusty

Matthew 18:23-35
“Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.

“But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.

“His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

“When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

Luke 6:35-36
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

James 2:12-13
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Psalm 103:8-12
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

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About the Author

Dusty serves as our lead pastor. He is a gifted leader, administrator and communicator with a passion to help others grow in their God-given potential. He joined the team as an associate pastor in 2009 and later transitioned to the role of lead pastor in January 2010. Dusty previously served as a youth pastor and director of youth camps and leadership events, for Foursquare churches in the Northwest, at Camp Crestview. He and his wife, Julie, grew up in the area and have three sons and five grandchildren.

Forgiveness | Learning Boundaries Within Forgiveness

I had several close childhood friendships that began in first grade and lasted into my college years. Every long friendship has its ups and downs, but one of these was particularly challenging. Our first grade teacher often confused “Anna” and I because we looked similar with our long dark hair and olive skin. We had a lot of fun, going to Brownies meetings, celebrating birthdays, getting muddy during soccer games, and having New Year’s Eve sleepovers where we stayed up late playing Mario on the Nintendo.

But this friend had a cruel streak. During one of my sleepovers at her house, she wiped her spit all over a toy I was just about to play with. In middle school she stopped talking to me for more than a year because one day I chose to have lunch with another friend. In high school, she put gum in her toddler sister’s hair and lied to her mom about it when she tried to explain what had happened.

Anna became the high school friend who would tell me mean things other people said about me, who would never bring me along to a party, but would tag along with my group of friends if she didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. I stayed her friend despite her meanness, and perhaps in part because of it. I knew she did not have many close friends; no one wanted to be treated so poorly. As a new Christian, I felt it was my duty to forgive and forgive again in order to show God’s love. I was a Christian doormat in my effort to be a life witness to that friend.

Still, I knew Anna was not a person I could trust. I was willing to practice kindness towards her and spend time with her, but over the years I put up more and more internal walls between myself and her. She stayed in touch with me through college, but when it came time to plan my wedding I didn’t include her in the wedding party. I know this hurt her feelings, although she wouldn’t let me see that.

That decision showed the limitations of my forgiveness. I could forgive, and I could be kind, and I could spend time with her if she needed. But as a repeated witness and victim of her mean streak, our friendship could not be restored to what it would have been had my trust not been broken time and again.

She ended up not coming to my wedding, and not returning my phone calls afterward. That was the end of our fifteen year friendship. I’ve wondered at times if I made the right choice not to have her in the wedding party. Would there have been any harm in including another person? Or does her decision not to come to my wedding or talk to me afterward prove that I made the right decision?

Maybe the wrong choice was actually in allowing the friendship to continue as long as it did without standing up for myself.

In the book of Romans, Paul writes, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Carefully consider what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone” Romans 12: 17-18.

Yet, there is a difference between living at peace with everyone and allowing people to treat you cruelly and take advantage of your kindness. A friendship is something that should be mutually enjoyed and beneficial to both parties. My friendship with Anna had morphed into something that was not actually a friendship; it was more akin to me subversively attempting to mentor her or be her free therapist.

This was not fair to me, but it was also not fair to her. By allowing our friendship to continue for so many years without confronting her negative behavior, I was being an enabler. For my part, our friendship was serving the purpose of making me feel like a Super Nice Person and a Good Christian.

After all was said and done, was it worth the many years I attempted to be a life witness to Anna, the times I brought her to church, the times she treated me as the ugly and forgotten Cinderella

The last time I’d seen her was a month or so before my wedding. She was visiting me at my parents’ house in Eugene. Anna said she wished she went to church because there were so many beautiful churches in downtown Portland near her apartment. That year she had gotten a cross tattoo on her ankle. We talked about my wedding plans, her job at Stumptown, about my upcoming college graduation. She said she wanted to start reading the Bible and asked if I had an extra one she could keep. I looked around and found an old one I was no longer using, with a hardback lilac cover that featured butterflies. She gave me a hug and was on her way.

Years later I bumped into her at the grocery store, when my eldest child was still tiny. I hugged her and introduced her to my toddler, then chatted briefly before taking off. She seemed bewildered — by what exactly?

My friendliness? My motherhood? My glossing over of the past?

Yes, it was all of that. All of that, and so much more.

Forgiveness and relationships go hand in hand, and both are often more complicated than expected. No friendship can be sustained in the long run unless both friends are willing to forgive each other their mistakes. And yet sometimes we are not forgiving in order to restore the friendship — sometimes the friendship unfortunately cannot be restored. In these cases, we forgive in order to bring healing to ourselves.

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About the Author

Ursula and her husband Spencer have two young children, and their family enjoys playing hide-and-seek and dancing in the living room. She works as a communications and events coordinator with the University of Oregon. Ursula has also just become CitySalt’s new Children’s Ministry Director. Congratulations, Ursula! 

You can read more from Ursula at motherbearblog.com.

Forgiveness | The Freedom of Forgiveness

One thing I have learned in my sixty plus orbits around the sun is that people are going to behave poorly. The reasons are often complex and far reaching but the bottom line is that every one of us gets hurt on some level by the selfishness, insensitivity and/or cluelessness of others. Not only do we get hurt… but most of us dish out our share of hurtful behavior. I suppose it is part of being human.

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that

“the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits.”

To be human is to be flawed… to do dumb things… to be selfish… to be a sinner. That is why forgiveness is so important. Forgiveness is the antidote for the hatred, resentment and angst caused by hurtful behavior. The more destructive the behavior, the greater the need to forgive and I know that often it is very difficult to really forgive and let go of the anger. When I feel resentment or anger toward some person or some situation, that negative emotion occupies my mind and robs me of the ability to think rationally. It really is a kind of a bondage in my mind and the crazy thing is that this person that I am upset with most likely has no idea that I am angry. Forgiveness sets us free from this bondage.

I recently had a neighbor that was a challenge to live near. This neighbor would do things to intentionally antagonize; like pointing speakers toward my house and blasting music all day or power washing twenty pounds of dirt onto and in front of my property.  Sometimes it worked. I got angry and raised my voice more than once at his behavior and the words that came out of my mouth were mocking and spiteful. I am not proud of that angry response. At first my prayers about these incidents were generally directed toward changing (or disappearing) this person but then I realized that my unforgiveness was the real issue. Resentment for my neighbor robbed me of the ability to have compassion and there can be no compassion without humility. First I had to humble myself and instead of ignoring or mocking my neighbor, I had to ask him to forgive me. Curiously, my neighbor did not quite know how to respond to this except to fire back another profane volley of hostility but my heart was softened and I realized that this man had likely experienced suffering in his life that I would never understand. I found, with my neighbor, that forgiveness is (unfortunately) not a one-time event. I had to forgive my neighbor almost every day when I noticed those resentful feelings start to creep in.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

This neighbor never really softened toward me and is probably still walking around with a measure of resentment in his heart but I am only bothered by this because I know this person is limited and diminished by his unforgiveness.  I am grateful that following Jesus’ example of forgiveness has allowed me to break free from this bondage. While it is important to forgive each other it is equally important to forgive ourselves. The life of Jesus represents that forgiveness each and every day. Forgiveness for ourselves and each other is a freedom we were designed to experience.

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About the Author

Joseph was born in Pendleton, Oregon. He attended the University of Oregon from which he graduated in 1979. He then served as a medic in the US Air Force.

Joseph has been married “to the same woman for 38 years” and they have four awesome children. He has enjoyed careers in forestry, education and software. Currently Joseph is retired, substitute teaching when possible and enjoying traveling with his wife.

Forgiveness | Spoken Word

Please take a moment to enter into this story of forgiveness and consider how Jesus is moving in your life to bring healing into your space of hurt.

Forgiveness | The Miracle of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is probably one of the most difficult yet important themes in our lives and world. We all know that we need it and need to offer it, but it is so hard to actually give it.

Many of us have heard that forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning what someone did to us, saying “That’s okay,” when it really wasn’t. We’ve heard sermons or other messages explaining that forgiveness is the act of letting go of the “right” or need to keep punishing the offender in our hearts. (Justice is a separate issue that I won’t be addressing here; I’ll be focusing on the relationships or heart matters.) We know that if we don’t offer it, we’ll be eaten up with bitterness on the inside. Even Don Henley acknowledges this in his ‘80s pop song “The Heart of the Matter”:

If you keep carrying that anger, it’ll eat you up inside, baby…
I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness, forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me

But is this all there is to it? Just a simple letting go, and suddenly our hearts are healed? Is it only for our own sake? I think there’s more to it than this.

First of all, it is not so simple. Sometimes it is: a misunderstanding gets explained, an apology soothes the hurt feelings, and reconciliation is swift and sweet. But other times, a wound runs too deep to be able to forgive quickly. It takes time and wise counsel, even professional counseling or therapy. And for many of us, these take more than we have in us to forgive at all.

This is when we cross into the realm of miracles. Yes, I believe in them. And I believe the greatest miracles of all are the ones where God’s power heals the hurt in us so we can forgive, and that power then touches the person who has been forgiven, and His glory is known. These are the stories that change the world.

A person very close to me challenged me last year to show proof of a couple things. One was miracles themselves. He wanted video proof. And the other was proof that love is more than just a chemical reaction to people. He informed me of Oxytocin, a chemical in our brain that causes us to feel feelings of love toward people.

I reflected on miracles and researched Oxytocin. As far as I can tell, it only accounts for love toward people that we want to love, like family, friends, and people we are romantically attached to. It doesn’t account for love toward strangers, like Mother Teresa helping lepers in India. Of course, that can be explained scientifically by the positive feelings we get from helping others.

But love for our enemies? I found no scientific explanation that can account for that. As far as I can tell, only God’s powerful love in us can cause us to pray for, forgive, and show love to our enemies. Corrie ten Boom writes in multiple books of hers how men who had been cruel guards to her in the Nazi concentration camps later went to hear her speak. They begged her for forgiveness. She momentarily had to fight her human nature of anger, and then God’s grace always won out, and she freely forgave them, causing them to weep. I’m sure that their lives, and anyone who witnessed this, were changed forever.

I know of a personal example of this, of a man in a country that is not open to the Good News seeing two Christian men reconcile with forgiveness after a deep wound between them. To protect him, I can’t say more specifically in this public post, but his life was changed dramatically after he saw this.

But I will offer the video below instead. This is the greatest (believable!) video evidence I can find of the power of God causing a miracle. I know it is a miracle because I don’t know a single person who has it in themselves to forgive this.

Now it is up to us. Who do you still need to forgive? It may be a long process, and you are only able to get a little closer to full forgiveness. Me, I’m still working on one. I keep thinking I’ve forgiven this person over the years, but it caused lasting damage, and he is a person that is not healthy for me to get in contact with to talk and get closure. So I’ll keep chipping away at it. Praying for healing, for wisdom, and for the power to forgive completely. Because I can’t do it on my own. And maybe, in time, it will be right for me to talk to this person and offer the healing that forgiveness does.

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About the Author

Jessie is an educator, currently in the role of academic advisor at a charter school after teaching there and overseas. She is also a novice writer, with several books in various stages and a (long-neglected) blog about the journeys of women. She is very excited to join the CitySalt blog team. She has been blessed by a few communities of Christian writers that have encouraged her dream. She lives with her trusty sidekick cat, Arwen in the foothills of South Eugene, where she can go hiking within minutes of the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

Forgiveness | You Do Not Have to Be Good

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

I think this poem by Mary Oliver says a lot about forgiveness.

“You do not have to be good.”

How many hours have I wasted in existential agony, beating myself up because I’ve failed to meet a bar set too high, sometimes by my own hand? I can ask for forgiveness from God, and I can extend forgiveness to others, but can I accept forgiveness? And isn’t that a kind of sin itself, wallowing in my inadequacies, failures, shortcomings? “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Colossians 3:14

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

Hoarding our shames to ourselves allows them to grow. Can we take a courageous breath and share our shortcomings with another? And isn’t that a kind of grace, to give someone else the gift of our weakness, so that they can trust us enough to give us theirs? “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

“... announcing your place in the family of things”

We are made in the image of God, called to community with the whole of creation, called to community with our neighbors, called to community with our family, called to community with our Creator. “If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” Psalm 139:9-10

Instead of falling into the same old cycles of regret, despair, and self-flagellation, let me breathe these truths:

I am a child of God. A creature of the Creator, known and cherished.
Forgiven of my debts.
Rescued from the power of darkness.
Reconciled through Jesus.
More than my worst mistake.
Beloved.
Amen.

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About the Author

Sarah is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She spends her days working for Evangelicals for Social Action and CreatureKind, helping Christians put their faith into action. She lives in Eugene with her husband, son, and animal companions and enjoys action movies, black coffee, the daily crossword, and dreaming of her next international journey.

Interruptible | Adventures with God

Have you ever been on a road trip with specific destinations in mind, only to discover some other adventure along the way? Perhaps you see a sign for a place that sounds interesting, or there is road construction, so you take a different route, leading you to new places to explore, interesting people to meet, or a situation where your help is needed and you’re so glad you came along. But what if you refuse to take the alternate route? You’re on a schedule, or comfortable in your air conditioning. You miss out.

We do this all the time in our journey with God. We get comfortable, or are on a tight schedule already, and think we don’t need to be interrupted by a divine appointment of any kind.

But God doesn’t do anything without a purpose. When He interrupts us, there’s a reason. It could be an opportunity to share His love/grace/good news/encouragement with someone that needs it, if we could just stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone. It could be a trial that we really don’t want to face, but is necessary for our growth or His glory. It could be that we’re on the wrong path, being led into temptation or addiction or something else that could wreak havoc in our lives, and He corrects us so we’ll get back on the right road. Sometimes it’s nothing this dramatic, but just a concept or issue in our life that He brings to the forefront for us to deal with before it becomes a devastating issue.

God has interrupted me with all of these and more. Funny thing, after I’d been given the theme of “interruptible” to write about, I came across a book about it without even trying. I was looking up Priscilla Shirer books on Amazon, because I like her Bible studies and recently discovered that she has YA fantasy novels. And saw that she had a book called Life Interrupted: Navigating the Unexpected. So I picked it up at the library the next morning.

The book follows the Bible story of Jonah, and how God interrupted his comfortable life with a calling he didn’t want to do. Ironically, the book itself was an interruption. It’s prompting me to do some things I really don’t want to do, like extend forgiveness again. Or pray for people that I don’t really want to pray for. And to look at how interruptible I am. Am I really willing to do what He calls me to, even when it’s not convenient? But I am encouraged by it, as well. Shirer says in discussing when God disciplines us, “When we feel His correction particularly heavy upon us, it’s sometimes not so much in proportion to past or recent sin as in proportion to the great task awaiting us when He’s done, when we’ve endured it.” How awesome is that? And I’ve seen it happen in my own life.

After I wrote the first draft of this, with an example from my life several years ago, I got tested on this very concept. The back of the book says “Interruptions. They’re aggravating. Sometimes infuriating. They make us want to tell people what we think of them. But how we handle interruptions actually tells us more about ourselves.” Boy howdy, I saw that firsthand this week.

On Sunday, I had texted my friend’s college-age daughter from Southern Oregon. She had stayed with me a bit last summer and house-sat for me. She’s a sweet young lady, but I hadn’t chatted with her for a while and needed her address to send her a Christian book and CD, so I sent her a text message on my phone. I asked if she was still living with her mom or on her own. The text I received back said “she” was good, living on “her” own in Eugene. I was surprised by this, asked why, and said I was glad she was doing well.

Well… unfortunately, the person that responded was not my friend’s daughter. She must have changed her phone number over the year.  Because at 10:23 that night, my phone rang, and I got an earful from an angry wife who could not be convinced that I was not having an affair with her husband. Evidently my text had reached him, instead. Really! My life isn’t easy, but it is definitely not that dramatic (thank goodness!). The poor lady could not be consoled, or convinced that my friend’s daughter’s name was not a pet name for her husband. Eventually she hung up, and I blocked both phone numbers and called the police non-emergency line to find out what to do. I was so rattled that I couldn’t sleep, but hey, I got all my grading done late that night! And I prayed, but mostly selfishly. I prayed a little for her, but mostly for my own protection. I wanted to lash out at her for interrupting my night and making me nervous that I’ll be called to court or visited by private investigators. And I wanted to call her Crazy Lady and other names for hurting my self-righteous pride by accusing me of something I think I’d never do, and let loose some of my drama queen teenage students on her. I finally fell into a restless sleep.

But God wasn’t done with my heart. Over the next day, I felt more and more compassion for her. Who knows why she reacted this way (he certainly wasn’t innocent in this- he didn’t even have the decency to write back that it was a wrong number and he didn’t know me!). But having experienced a bad marriage and divorce myself, I knew that they probably both have issues, or at least things to deal with, and it’s not my place to judge either of them. They both needed prayer, just as much as my ex-husband and I did. So the next night, I prayed for them for real. On my knees. Humbly and compassionately (finally!), I prayed for their marriage. For God’s will to be done in it, for His best for both of them (and any children they may have).

I felt very much like Jonah at that point. Who knows if they had anyone else in their lives to pray for them? But God allowed my life to be interrupted, and I have to believe that there was a purpose in that. Hopefully, my prayers will somehow help them. It taught me once again to surrender more quickly to His will. Previous (and bigger) interruptions in my life have always taught me something, too. Usually it’s to trust Him more. And many times, those interruptions have blessed me in ways I’d have never imagined.

Dear God, please keep interrupting me. Forgive me when I don’t respond quickly and with a surrendered heart. Help me to trust You fully. And thank You so much for loving me, and for giving me second chances and new adventures.

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About the Author

Jessie is an educator, currently in the role of academic advisor at a charter school after teaching there and overseas. She is also a novice writer, with several books in various stages and a (long-neglected) blog about the journeys of women. She is very excited to join the CitySalt blog team. She has been blessed by a few communities of Christian writers that have encouraged her dream. She lives with her trusty sidekick cat, Arwen in the foothills of South Eugene, where she can go hiking within minutes of the sun coming out from behind the clouds.