The Journey to Me

The Good Stranger b y Ester Barnes, As a woman was traveling the road between romance and reality, she fell in love with the charming but insecure young man. And it came to pass that after they were married, he beat her and robbed her of her dignity, and she ran from the house bruised and afraid, wishing she were dead. A faith leader saw her swollen face and stopped to give some advice, “Wives, submit to your husbands,” he read. And he excused himself to attend a seminar on Motivating Strong Leaders. A doctor stopped and bandaged her face and gave her a prescription for Valium. A women’s group leader hearing her sobs felt a rush of pity. “I don’t know what she sees in him,” she thought and was thankful for her own gently husband. And she went to buy the young woman a book on Making Your Marriage Work. A police officer asked her if she needed help. She asked him to arrest her husband. The officer asked if there were any witnesses to the assault. Since there were none, he left her alone....

1. Forgiveness is NOT a feeling....It is a promise. Isaiah. 43:25 When God said He "won't remember" it is not the same as forgetting our sins. God is omniscient and He cannot forget. But He can choose to "not remember". Forgetting is passive and is something that we humans do, not The Omniscient! 2. We must learn to forgive the way God forgives. When we say to someone, "I forgive you", it is a promise. And it is a threefold promise. We promise not to bring up their sin to: them, others or ourselves 3. When we have sinned or we remember someone has someone something against us, we are to go to them quickly!. Many times people say, "Why should I go when they were wrong?" Because you are the one that knows there is a problem. Many times people may have offended you but they don't know it. The one who knows, goes! 4. "What if I don't feel like I have forgiven them". Forgiveness is not a feeling. "Would I not be a hypocrite...

"After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before" (Job 42:10). Have you ever been wrongly judged? Have you ever had people assume there was sin in your life because of the troubles you may have experienced? Or perhaps they judged your motives as wrong. What if the people judging you were your closest friends? This was exactly what happened in the life of Job. His friends did not understand how a godly person could ever go through his degree of adversity his unless God was judging him for his sin. However, his friends were wrong and God intervened. "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has," said God to Job's three friends. Nothing has really changed after thousands of years. I recall going through a "Job" experience. Friends in the marketplace could not understand why I would experience such calamity unless I had ...