Christ died to make forgiveness available to us: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7).
You may have noticed that acceptance of your tendency to sin is often a difficult step to take. Seeking forgiveness is an even more difficult step to take. To ask for forgiveness implies repentance and a willingness to forsake sins. Isaiah 55:7 teaches, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”
Many people insist that a period of depression, self-condemnation, sadness, remorse, or weeping is evidence of repentance. In Quebec, one can see people climb five hundred cathedral steps on their knees in evidence of repentance. In India, a man may be lying on a bed of spikes. It is true that conviction of sin causes some people to react emotionally or to show evidence of repentance. However, true repentance is not found in the emotion or the action. It is, rather, being truly sorry enough for sin to hate and forsake it. Repentance involves following God’s plan and believing His Word.
1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The simplicity of receiving forgiveness is hard to accept. Nothing is required of you apart from acceptance of your sinfulness and of God’s forgiveness on His terms, not yours. This must be done from the heart. There is no other way. You must be completely sincere. You will not find forgiveness until you are convinced that you need it.
Yes, acceptance of your tendency to sin, confession of specific sins, and seeking forgiveness are contrary to our normal way of doing things. But the next step–surrender to the power of God–is the hardest of all to accept.
Surrender To the Power of God
At first glance, it would seem that to submit to the strength and power of God is something that everyone would gladly do. However, many people find this the hardest step of all to take. As Paul expresses it, “Our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).
Our human nature tends to rebel against accepting any kind of weakness or insufficiency. Even if you acknowledge the failures of your past, you may be unwilling to acknowledge your inability to please God in the future. We all tend to feel that since we understand the reason for our past failures, we can now do better. We tend to seek the answer to our sinfulness in two ways: to repent for past sins and to retain confidence in ourselves not to repeat past sins. We tend to retain our faith in our own self-discipline, willpower, training, and self-sacrifice.
To surrender to God means we must commit ourselves to a lifetime study of His will for every detail of our lives. It means recognizing our inability to do His will apart from His power and our need to submit to Him daily for His power.
Colossians 1:10-11 teaches us, “…that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.”
To surrender to God involves a clear, definite yielding of one’s self completely to God, followed by day-by-day experience of that surrender. Note Paul’s words: “And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:13).
This is a matter of the will. Ephesians 5:18 instructs us to “Be filled with the Spirit.” Here is the secret of God’s power–the Holy Spirit expressing Himself through us! He works in us only as we let Him.
A young woman was married to a man who refused to give her spending money. This disturbed her to the extent that she was always feeling sorry for herself and was angry with her husband. She went to an older woman in the church who was known to be a calm, peaceful soul. The older woman said to the younger one: “Let me tell you my story. My husband keeps all the money. He seldom pays any attention to my opinion. Now that the children are married, he gives most of his time to them and has no room for me in his life. This has gone on for thirty years. It will probably go on as long as I live. All these years I have prayed daily for patience and every day God answers my prayer.”
This man’s behavior is totally selfish and another whole topic of discussion. But the point here is that his wife surrendered her unhappiness and frustration to God and found daily grace and strength to continue to love him. To surrender to God is to bring each circumstance of life to Him and receive from Him the strength to face it by His Spirit. It is one thing to make a broad, thoughtless statement that you will submit to God and another thing to surrender each detail of life to Him.
When you are impatient, you lack patience; when you are unhappy, you lack joy; when you are tense and anxious, you lack peace. You must continuously go to the source of supply. Comfort, mercy, grace, peace, joy, patience, and longsuffering with joyfulness will be yours only when you recognize that you lack them and when you let God give them to you.
Great Expectations
Todd Turner was in trouble: for the third time, his wife had threatened to leave him, and this time she meant it. And all over a dog—or so Todd said.
Todd was away from home much of the time and had bought Tracy a dog for company before the birth of their first child. After the baby’s arrival, Todd wanted to get rid of the dog.
“If the dog goes, I go, too,” Tracy warned.
“All right, go ahead,” he told her.
And so they separated.
I met first with Tracy who gave me her side of the story. She complained that she had to share her husband with too many people. He worked late, spent three or four nights a week at the church, and visited his mother every day. Often he didn’t come home for supper at all. He made her feel as if she were not needed.
“My dad never treated my mother that way,” she told me. “They went everywhere together. He was always affectionate to her and generous with his compliments. But Todd,” she said scathingly, “only gives me a peck on the cheek when he comes home—if he doesn’t forget. As for my housekeeping and cooking and caring for the baby, he just takes them for granted!”
When I got the chance to talk with Todd, I learned that he thought Tracy should realize he loved her when he worked long and hard and provided for her.
“Shouldn’t the new carpet I bought her prove my love more than a lot of kissing?” he asked. “And why does she insist on keeping that dumb dog?” he grumbled.
It was clear that their trouble was far greater than the disagreement they were having about the dog. Here were a man and woman who looked at life from very different viewpoints. Tracy wanted to reproduce the pleasant experiences of her childhood home. She wanted to go places with her husband and receive more of his attention at home.
Todd, however, had been the only child at his house, and he was free to come and go as he pleased. His mother had been satisfied with a few minutes of his time each day. Todd enjoyed this kind of life, and he was seeking to reproduce it in adulthood.
And now each felt let down by the other.
Both Todd and Tracy found it lonely living apart. They met and tried to talk things over amiably, but ended up defending their past actions. I saw them separately several times, and gradually each became a little more willing to look at the other’s viewpoint. I reminded them of Philippians 2:4, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interest of others.” Slowly they came to realize that the conditions in their parents’ homes could not be reproduced in their own marriage.
One day Todd said candidly, “I understand now. You’re telling me I am a selfish man.”
It was not easy for him to say, but he followed it up with efforts that brought the two back to the same house.
It took longer for Tracy to see her weakness. Todd kept praying for patience, and they are finally making some progress. When he tends to neglect her, she pouts. But they recognize their problem and are slowly building a life together as each learns to look to the interests of the other.
The names and certain details in this true case history have been changed to protect each person’s identity and privacy.
