Monthly Archives: May 2016

Pay It Forward

Christian Life, , , ,

PAY IT FORWARD

“Pay it forward” is a brilliant movie about a twelve-year old boy, Trevor, whose school project set by a new teacher at the school, was to do something that would change the world. Trevor’s plan was to do a good deed for someone with the instruction that the recipient “pay it forward”, doing a good deed in return, not to his benefactor, but to three other people in his world who needed help.

Trevor’s plan, though both simple and effective, seemed to stall, leaving him discouraged and disillusioned. However, on his untimely death in the school playground at the hands of a bully from who he was trying to defend a fellow student, hundreds of people turned up at his mother’s home to mourn his loss and to report how his “project” had affected their lives.

God has a “pay it forward” project hidden in His instructions for living the best life. We call these instructions the Ten Commandments but they are actually a part of His marriage contract with His people which He gave them when He proposed marriage to them at Mount Sinai. We will not easily recognise His “pay it forward” principle until we understand something of God’s heart and ways.

One of His imperatives is to “honour your father and mother” so that you will live long in the land God gives you. For many children, this is a difficult if not impossible instruction because they come from broken or dysfunctional homes. Even those have had a relatively uneventful childhood will admit that their parents were not perfect. Every child carries the scars of abuse, neglect or other unwise treatment from their growing-up years. How is it possible to honour parents who have inflicted great damage on a young soul? Is God so unrealistic or idealistic that He expects hurting people just to “forgive and forget”?

God knows us far better than we know ourselves. He is not setting the standard so high that we will never reach it. He has something else in mind, necessary, simple and effective. As far as the past is concerned, He has one prescription for dealing with the damage – not psychiatrists, counsellors, medication or therapy, none of which deal with the root. God’s way is forgiveness. “Cancel the debt and let it go,” is the only effective way to get rid of the baggage of the past.

Why does He insist we forgive? For two reasons: firstly, Jesus paid the debt of all the sin of all people for all time. To hold bitterness, resentment and hatred in our hearts is to negate what Jesus did and put ourselves in the way of judgment. If we refuse to forgive, our sin remains unforgiven.

Secondly, we forgive, not because we must but because we may. Forgiveness sets us free from destructive emotions that threaten both our bodies and souls. Without the death of Jesus to take care of sin, we would have no possibility of forgiving others. We would have to carry our burden to the end of our days. However, He has dealt with the debt of every human being who ever lived and who ever will still live. In spite of whatever anyone has said or done to us, they owe us nothing. Forgiving them frees us from carrying the load.

So, what has this to do with honouring our fathers and mothers? God is more concerned about the future than the past. How we treat our own offspring is more important than how our parents treated us. As far as God is concerned, our past has ceased to exist. All we need to do is let it go. Holding onto bitterness will cripple us and rob us of becoming real sons and daughters of our Father.

We are not responsible for what our parents did to or for us in the past. We are responsible and accountable to God for the way we raise the next generation. We have a choice to make. Are we going to perpetuate the sins of our fathers or are we going to start a new way of living in our families. If we continue to punish our children for our failure to forgive, who will stop the rot and who will teach them the ways of the Lord?

There is another unexpected benefit for us when we bring righteousness back into the family. Those around us will reckon that we must have had godly parents who taught us to walk in God’s ways. Here is the real evidence of honouring our parents. Instead of shining the light on their flaws and failures, we release them and bring honour to them for giving us life and the privilege of giving life to the next generation whom we will guide in and teach the ways of the Lord.

Instead of damaging ourselves by trying to pay our parents back for short-changing us in life, we pay it forward by giving our children the best we can. There is no better heritage for any child than the love, acceptance and affirmation of his parents. Whoever and whatever they are, it is the role of a father and mother to love unconditionally, to accept their children for themselves and not for what they can or cannot do. We are to honour and respect them as God’s gift to raise and send out into the world to pay it forward so that others may see Him in them and come to believe in Him.

But the principle of “paying it forward” works equally well in our relationships with others around us. We live in a “you owe me” or an ”I am entitled to” generation. It’s all about what we can get out of others. Instead of expecting to be repaid for every good deed we do for another, why not adopt a new way of living? Paying it forward means that we expect nothing from the one we have helped. Instead, the kindness is passed on to an unexpected beneficiary who passes it on to another.

Imagine the ripple effect of deeds of kindness that bring joy to the giver and gratitude to the recipient who, in turn passes on the same possibility on in an ever-widening circle! How much better than keeping the good deeds going back and forth between two people.

Jesus put it like something like this, in the words of Eugene Peterson (The Message):

Here is a simple rule-of-thumb guide for behaviour: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. (Matt. 7: 12).

 

Playing The Blame Game

Christian Life, , , ,

PLAYING THE BLAME GAME

The “blame game” is as old as the human race. It was Adam’s ploy when he tried to wriggle out of the responsibility of what he had done. More heinous was the fact that he blamed God for giving him a wife! “The woman you gave me,” he declared, “she is to blame.” How treacherous was that?

Humanity had been playing the blame game ever since and the results are tragic. Our mental institutions, psychiatrists’ offices, counselling rooms and pastors’ studies are packed with people seeking help for their psychological, mental and spiritual maladies because they believe that it is someone else’s fault that they are in their pit of misery.

I do not deny that people experience all kinds of bad things, especially in early childhood when they are vulnerable and their opinions about themselves, other people and God are being formed. Without the love, acceptance and wise counsel of parents and other adults of significance to them, they will develop feelings of rejection, abandonment, worthlessness and hopelessness.

Unfortunately, the enemy of our souls makes the most mileage out of this kind of scenario to lure people into self-destruction. Addictions and self-destructive behaviour patterns often leading to crime, take many a young person down the road to ruin because they believe they are worth nothing and punish others for their emotional pain. The family devastation is passed down from one generation to the next, often escalating in the degree of violence and tearing human society apart in the process. Whole communities became prey to people who have chosen the path of evil to deal with their own issues.

God gave the first pair the priceless gift of choice and, even after Adam declared independence, God did not withdraw His gift. The privilege of making our own decisions and choices is part of the very fabric of human life. If we were not free to choose, there would be no possibility that we could be restored to fellowship and favour with God. We would be puppets and robots in God’s hands and it would be impossible for us to love Him freely.

God respects the gift He gave us to the extent that He honours our decision to destroy ourselves by refusing to obey Him and follow His way. A wealthy young man came to Jesus with a question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He wanted the assurance of eternal life on his terms, just one magnificent act or deed and then he could carry on living just as he had always done because his ticket to eternal life as assured.

Jesus told him the truth. “It doesn’t work that way. Eternal life is not a ticket to carry that will admit you to heaven but a way of life that unfolds as you walk, one moment at a time, one choice, one decision at a time. It starts with the decision to put aside everything that hinders you from following me. That means that you must get rid of your money because you will serve what you love. Your money stands between you and me. It must go – otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.”

The young man chose his money and Jesus let him go.

If we choose to follow Jesus, to live with Him, learn from Him and walk with Him towards the Father, of necessity it means that we take responsibility for our choices rather than find someone or something else to blame when we take a wrong turn. For the many thousands who are emotional and mental cripples who make others responsible for their self-destruction, there are the few who have had the courage to make the kind of choices that have taken them up instead of down.

It does not matter who we are, what we have experienced in life or how bad we feel about ourselves, the first step out of the swamp is to acknowledge that everything we do, we do because we choose to do it. The first drink, the first cigarette, the first drug you uses, the first casual sexual encounter, the first criminal act was your choice. You did not have to do any of these things you chose to do them because you believed the devil’s lies. You knew in your heart that none of these choices would fix your problem. They would only compound it.

What about those who believe and follow Jesus. We are just as vulnerable to temptation an often fall prey to a subtle suggestion from our enemy before we stop and think. We know that we need to confess our sin. The problem is that we tend to confess because we have been found out because our conscience troubles us until we admit that we have said or done wrong. True confession should not stop there. We can still hide behind someone or something else for our sin.

God wants us to reach the place that we take full responsibility for what we have done. The whole point of confession is much more than apologising for being found out. Confession, – homologeo in Greek means that I am in complete agreement with God for His verdict on the matter, not so that He can punish me but that He can include what I have done in His forgiveness bought by the blood of His Son. When we come clean with God, He wipes the slate clean and declares us “Not guilty.”

It’s no wonder there are as many emotional cripples in the church as there are in the world. We are waiting to be “delivered” from our issues when we do not need someone to rescue us. Jesus has already rescued us. All He wants from us is the honest admission that we chose to believe the lies about ourselves and God, that we are worthless, useless, hopeless or unlovable and that God hates us, doesn’t care, isn’t interested or whatever other lies we believe.

When we agree with God that He is right and we are wrong, He forgives our sin and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. And, guess what, we are free! Playing the blame game is stupid, futile and a dead end. Come clean with God. You’ll enjoy His peace to the fullest measure.