From your hook to God"s hook

“Forgiveness . . . is moving the guilty from your hook to God’s hook.”- June Hunt

Today, in Chapter 3 of How to Forgive, June Hunt concludes her discussion of seven misunderstandings about forgiveness.

4.  Forgiveness is not excusing the wrong or letting the guilty “get away with it.”  Ms. Hunt states that all wrong behavior is wrong and without excuse.  When we are wounded, the offense and the emotional pain we incur are real.

5.  Forgiveness is not letting the guilty off the hook.  Forgiveness is not letting the offender off the hook, but moving that offender from your hook to God’s hook.  June points out that we don’t even have the ability to let our offender off the hook of the potential consequences he or she may have to face.  However, we can take that person off our emotional hook, trusting God to deal with the offender in a way that is just and right.  When we no longer feel compelled to throw stones, our hands are open to receive the good things God wants to give us.

6.  Forgiveness is not being a “doormat” or a weak martyr.  Ms. Hunt emphasizes that forgiveness is being strong enough to be Christlike- a sign of godly courage.   As we forgive, we align ourselves with Christ, who offers us full forgiveness.

7.  Forgiveness has nothing to do with “fairness.”  When it comes to forgiveness, the word fairness can be a huge obstacle.  We like the scales to balance.  June explains God’s way:

“Forgiveness has nothing to do with fairness- or else it would not be forgiveness at all!  Forgiveness is the unconditional dismissal of a debt.  Forgiveness is dropping stones when the world says to throw stones.”

Today’s question: Which of June Hunt’s seven misconceptions of forgiveness resonate most with you?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Learning to forgive”

From your hook to God"s hook

Forgiveness and reconciliation

June Hunt continues her discussion of seven misunderstandings about forgiveness (Chapter 3, How to Forgive) by comparing forgiveness and reconciliation.  She also states that forgiveness is not a feeling.

2.  Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation.  Forgiveness does not equate with instant reconciliation.  Forgiveness doesn’t mean you turn back the clock and start over as if the offense never took place.  Ms. Hunt contrasts forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness

a.  can lead to reconciliation

b.  is one-way

c.  requires nothing at all from the offender

Reconciliation

a.  sometimes is not warranted or even possible

b.  is two-way

c.  requires a change in the offender’s behavior

When we forgive, we unilaterally and unconditionally cancel the debt.  June writes: We don’t bury the hatchet, but we do drop the stone.”

3.  Forgiveness is not a feeling.  June emphasizes that forgiveness is a decision, an act of the will.  We choose to let go of our claim against the offender, as God asks, and hand the claim over to Christ.  Know that if you have “Christ in you” (Colossians 1:27), His supernatural nature and power is at your disposal.  You can do what you feel you cannot do.

In nineteenth-century Russia, only the czar’s family was permitted to own “Imperial Topaz.”  Ms. Hunt describes what happens when we release our grip on the rock offense that leaves us emotionally immobile:

“You can choose to release your grip and watch God fashion your feelings into a forgiving spirit.  You can choose to hand that stone over to the Master Miner.  From it, He will create something even more valuable than you could envision- even more valuable than Imperial Topaz.”

Today’s question: Have you ever equated forgiveness and reconciliation?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “From your hook to God’s hook”

Forgiveness and reconciliation

Confusion about forgiveness

“By clearing away some of the confusion about forgiveness, we lay the foundation for our own freedom.  The stone wall encasing our hearts can be broken, freeing us from our rocks of resentment.”- June Hunt

June Hunt begins Chapter 3(“Stone Her!  Stone Her!  What Forgiveness Is, What Forgiveness Isn’t”) of How to Forgive by citing John’s account of The Woman Caught in Adultery (John 8:1-11).  June states that this passage of Scripture is filled with  “the heart of compassion and the hope of forgiveness.”

No one, in truth, desires to be like the stone throwers in this story.  However, when we won’t loosen our grip and let our stones fall to the ground, we become just like those stone throwers.  Even though we want others to drop their stones, we are quite reluctant to drop ours.  June stresses that this reluctance is based on a misunderstanding of what forgiveness is and is not.

Ms. Hunt explores seven misunderstandings about forgiveness.  The first misconception is discussed today.

1.  Forgiveness is not a natural response- but rather supernatural.  So many people try to muster their own strength and determination when it comes to forgiveness.  They try to do it alone.  But they continue to seethe with resentment and rage because they haven’t entrusted their lives to Christ, allowing Him to give them His strength to forgive.  We need both Christ’s presence and power in order to forgive.  Forgiveness isn’t natural.  It only happens when we surrender to God’s will and tap into His strength.

Today’s question: Do you have any confusion about forgiveness?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Forgiveness and reconciliation”

 

Confusion about forgiveness

Reshaping a hardened heart

In Chapter 2 (“The School of Hard Rocks: Reshaping a Hardened Heart”) of How to Forgive, June Hunt speaks of reshaping a hardened heart- hers.  Ms. Hunt describes her father as hard as flint with a hair-trigger temper.  Although her father was recognized as a visionary business leader, at home the family walked on eggshells due to his oppression.

June, her mother, and three siblings were her father’s covert family.  Unbeknownst to June’s mother when she became romantically involved with June’s father, he was a married man with six children.  His perpetual pummeling included verbal and mental abuse.  At the age of fifteen, June researched and then proposed murdering her father to her mother.  Thankfully, mother’s cooler head prevailed.

When June became a Christian, she was surprised that “Christ inside me started changing me from the inside out.”  Yet even though she knew the biblical command to love one another as well as our enemies, she truly believed her situation was a legitimate exception and that God understood.  June only had one problem: God’s holy standard is to hate no one- and June wasn’t an exception.  The standard applies to all.

June explains reshaping a hardened heart:

“Unforgiveness can make you heart hard and dark like flint, and over time, you can amass enough bitterness to build an impenetrable wall around your soul.  But when you surrender your hardened heart to the Master Stonecutter, He reshapes your heart to look like His– sensitive to the needs of others . . . . By releasing the flint into His hands- the flint of unforgiveness- He will reshape your hardened heart and make it like his.”

Today’s question: What Scriptures have guided and strengthened you to give you a forgiving heart?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Confusion about forgiveness”

Reshaping a hardened heart

Embedded bitterness

“I don’t want those who are hurting to be further hurt by embedded bitterness– simply because they don’t grasp the true meaning of forgiveness . . . or they don’t know the ‘how-to’s’ of forgiveness.”- June Hunt

June Hunt is a biblical counselor and founder of Hope For The Heart, a worldwide biblical counseling ministry.  Each weeknight June hosts a live, two-hour call-in counseling program called Hope in the Night. 

In her introduction (“The Struggle to Forgive”) to How to Forgive . . . When You Don’t Feel Like It (2007), June writes that forgiveness is:

a.  a decision– an act of the will that results in true freedom when it is done right.

b.  a process– often misunderstood.  We need to learn the why of forgiveness as well as learn to live out the heart of forgiveness.

God’s call in Colossians 3:3 has been the catalyst for Ms. Hunt’s journey: “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Through out the book June’s prayer is twofold:

1.  that you will learn how to get rid of the “boulders” of bitterness holding you back


2.  that you will experience the freedom of forgiveness as you learn how to forgive even when you don’t feel like it

In Chapter 1, June cites the popular adage “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  The truth is that words can break our hearts.  Solomon wrote in Proverbs 18:21- “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

June notes that words can kill relationships or murder our motivation and inspiration.  Unforgiveness weighs us down with too many rocks.  The best we can do is trudge through life when that happens.  June describes how forgiveness changes the picture:

“When we forgive, we get rid of the rocks dragging us down and depleting our strength.”

Today’s question: How would you describe forgiveness?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Reshaping a hardened heart”

Embedded bitterness

The Circle Maker

The Circle Maker (Zondervan, 2011)

Mark Batterson, lead pastor at National Community Church in Washington, DC, wrote The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears in 2011.  Mark’s stated purpose in writing The Circle Maker is to “show you how to claim God-given promises, pursue God-ordained dreams, and seize God-ordained opportunities.”  Drawing circles begins with discerning God’s will, the goal being to glorify God.  As you discern what to circle in prayer and spell out your prayers with specificity, eventually it will spell God’s glory.  God will answer at some point, and His answers are not limited by your requests.  That means you can live with holy anticipation and pray with holy confidence.

Pastor Batterson emphasizes that prayer solving, rather than problem solving, wins the day.  Consistency and intensity are essential to praying.  And after you pray through, you need to praise through, even if God doesn’t answer the way you want or in the time you want.  Ultimately, the size of your prayer comes down to the size of your God.  Your impossible prayer is an easy answer for a mighty God.  Far greater than your capability to receive is God’s capacity to give.  God always provides just enough just in time.  Nothing is too big- or too small- for God.  Sometimes God gets in the way to show us the way.  Divine detours take us to the miracles we need, but don’t necessarily want.

When drawing prayer circles begins to feel long and boring,  because answers don’t seem to be forth coming, Mark encourages us to stop, draw, and pray.  Pray primes us, putting us in a spiritual frame of mind and sanctifying our expectations.  Staring the day in prayer is the best way to establish a daily rhythm in order to have a daily relationship with God.  To break the faith barrier, we need to press in and pray through.  Goal-setting is a great way of simultaneously praying hard, thinking long, and dreaming big.  Each prayer is precious to God and sealed by Him.  The end of a prayer is the beginning of a dream, the beginning of a miracle, the beginning of a promise.

 

 

 

The Circle Maker

All my tears

“You have collected all my tears in your bottle.”- Psalm 56:8

In Chapters 17 (“Bottled Prayer”) and 18 (“Now There Was One”), the concluding chapters of The Circle Maker, Mark Batterson writes that there are many different kind of tears, including the tears shed in prayer.  Specifically, David’s psalm promise may be the place for you to begin circling:

“Each and every teardrop is precious to God.  They are eternal keepsakes.  The day will come when He wipes away every tear in heaven.  Until then, God will move heaven and earth to honor every tear that has been shed.  Not a single tear is lost on God.  He remembers each one.  He collects each one. . . . God collects our prayers.  Each one is precious to Him.  Each one is sealed by God.  And you never know when He’s going to uncork an answer.”

Mark encourages us not to let what we cannot do keep us from doing what we can do or let who we are not keep us from being who we are.  We are circle makers who need others to agree with us in prayer.  Most importantly, Mark emphasizes that the ending of a prayer is the beginning of a dream.  The power of one prayer circle never can be underestimated.  As Josephus wrote about Honi the circle maker in Antiquities of the Jews, “Now there was one. . . ”

Today’s question:  How does  circling the promise about “all my tears” in Psalm 56:8 bring comfort to you?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: the latest addition to Crown’s Annotated Bibliography, The Circle Maker

All my tears